IMMT* 

1      ^OIMO      J  '  0^?"  . 

/          > 


GOSPELS    OF   ANARCHY 


GOSPELS  OF  ANARCHY 


AND 


OTHER    CONTEMPORARY    STUDIES 


BY 


VERNON    LEE 


NEW   YORK  :     BRENTANO'S 
LONDON  :       T.    FISHER     UNWIN 
1909 


(All  rights  reserved.} 


To 
H.    G.    WELLS 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  GOSPELS   OF    ANARCHY          .  .  .  .II 

II.  EMERSON       AS       A       TEACHER      OF       LATTER-DAY 

TENDENCIES        .  .  .  .  •      41 

III.  DETERIORATION   OF    SOUL  .  .  .  .       J I 

IV.  TOLSTOI    AS    A    PROPHET      .  .  .  .    103 

V.  TOLSTOI    ON    ART    .  .  .  .  .    133 

VI.  NIETZSCHE    AND   THE    "  WILL   TO   POWER"  .    159 
VII.        PROFESSOR    JAMES    AND    THE    "  WILL   TO    BELIEVE"    IQI 

VIII.       ROSNY    AND    THE    FRENCH    ANALYTICAL    NOVEL        .    233 
IX.        THE    ECONOMIC    PARASITISM    OF    WOMEN      .  .    26l 

X.         RUSKIN    AS    A    REFORMER    ....    299 

XI.  ON    MODERN    UTOPIAS  :     AN    OPEN    LETTER   TO   MR. 

H.    G.    WELLS      .....    323 

XII.  A    POSTSCRIPT   ON    MR.    WELLS    AND    UTOPIAS  .    351 

9 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 


IN  such  of  us  as  not  merely  live,  but  think  and  feel 
what  life  is  and  might  be,  there  is  enacted  an  inner 
drama  full  of  conflicting  emotions,  long  drawn  out 
through  the  years,  and,  in  many  cases,  never  brought 
to  a  conclusion. 

It  begins  with  the  gradual  suspicion,  as  we  pass  out 
of  childish  tutelage,  that  the  world  is  not  at  all  the 
definite,  arranged,  mechanical  thing  which  the  doctrine 
convenient  to  our  elders  and  our  own  optimistic  egoism 
have  led  us  to  expect ;  that  the  causes  and  results 
of  actions  are  by  no  means  so  simple  as  we  imagined, 
and  that  good  and  evil  are  not  so  distinctly  opposed  as 
black  and  white.  We  guess,  we  slowly  recognise  with 
difficulty  and  astonishment,  that  this  well-regulated 
structure  called  the  universe  or  life  is  a  sham  con- 
structed by  human  hands  ;  that  the  reality  is  a  seething 
whirlpool  of  forces  seemingly  blind,  mainly  disorderly 
and  cruel,  and,  at  the  best,  utterly  indifferent  ;  a  chaos 
of  which  we  recognise,  with  humiliation  turning  into 
cynicism,  that  our  poor  self  is  but  a  part  and  a 
sample. 

Thus  we  feel.     But  if  we  feel  long  enough,  and  do 


14  GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY 

not  get  blunted  in  the  process,  we  are  brought  gradually, 
by  additional  seeing  and  feeling,  to  a  totally  new  view 
of  things.  The  chaos  becomes  ordered,  the  void  a 
firmament ;  and  we  recognise  with  joy  and  pride  that 
the  universe  has  made  us,  and  that  we,  perceiving  it, 
have  made  the  universe  in  our  turn  ;  and  that  therefore 
"  in  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace." 

The  following  notes  display  this  process  of  destruc- 
tion and  reconstruction  in  one  particular  type  of  mind  ; 
embody,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  constitutionally 
tend  to  think  alike,  and  still  more  of  those  who  are 
constitutionally  bound  to  think  otherwise,  the  silent 
discussions  on  anarchy  and  law  which  have  arisen  in 
me  as  a  result  of  other  folks'  opinions  and  my  own 
experience  of  life's  complexities  and  deadlocks. 


I 


The  intellectual  rebellion  and  lawlessness  of  our 
contemporaries  have  been  summed  up  by  Mr.  Henry 
Brewster,  in  a  book  too  subtle  and  too  cosmopolitan 
ever  to  receive  adequate  appreciation. 

"  On  the  one  hand,  a  revolt  against  any  philosophical 
system  of  unity,  which  many  would  call  a  revolt  against 
all  philosophy,  genuine  scepticism.  Then  the  denial 
that  the  feeling  of  obligation  can  be  brought  to  bear 
on  any  fixed  point.  .  .  .  Morally,  we  must  content 
ourselves  with  the  various  injunctions  of  wisdom  and 
with  distinct,  independent  ideals.  Something  beyond 
them  is,  indeed,  recognised ;  but,  whereas  we  were 
accustomed  to  place  it  in  the  obligatory  character  of 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  15 

certain  prescriptions,  we  are  now  told  to  understand 
it  as  a  perpetual  warning  against  all  dogmatism."  J 

This  is,  as  I  have  said,  the  modern  formula  of 
scepticism  and  revolt.  But  similar  doubts  must  have 
arisen,  most  certainly,  in  all  kinds  of  men  at  all  times, 
producing  worldly  wise  cynicism  in  some  and  religious 
distress  in  others.  Such  doubts  as  these  have  lurked, 
one  suspects,  at  the  bottom  of  all  transcendentalism. 
They  are  summed  up  in  Emerson's  disquieting  remark 
that  saints  are  sad  where  philosophers  are  merely  in- 
terested, because  the  first  see  sin  where  the  second  see 
only  cause  and  effect.  They  are  implied  in  a  great 
deal  of  religious  mysticism,  habitually  lurking  in 
esoteric  depths  of  speculation,  but  penetrating  occa- 
sionally, mysterious  subtle  gases,  to  life's  surface,  and 
there  igniting  at  contact  with  the  active  impulses  of 
men  ;  whence  the  ambiguous  ethics,  the  questionable 
ways  of  many  sects  originally  ascetic.  Nay,  it  is  quite 
conceivable  that,  if  there  really  existed  the  thing  called 
the  Secret  of  the  Church  which  Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam's 
gambling  abbe  staked  at  cards  against  twenty  louis-d'or, 
it  would  be  found  to  be,  not  that  there  is  no  purgatory  > 
but  rather  that  there  is  no  heaven  and  hell,  no  law  and 
no  sin. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  all  dogmatic  religions  have  forcibly 
repressed  such  speculations,  transcendental  or  practical, 
upon  the  ways  of  the  universe  and  of  man.  And  it  is 
only  in  our  own  day,  with  the  habit  of  each  individual 
striking  out  his  practice  for  himself,  and  with  the 
scientific  recognition  that  the  various  religiously 
sanctioned  codes  embody  a  very  rough-and-ready  practi- 
J  "Theories  of  Anarchy  and  Law,"  p.  113, 


16  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

cability — it  is  only  in  our  own  day  that  people  are 
beginning  to  question  the  perfection  of  established 
rules  of  conduct,  to  discuss  the  drawbacks  of  duty  and 
self-sacrifice,  and  to  speculate  upon  the  possible  futility 
of  all  ethical  systems,  nay,  upon  the  possible  vanity  of 
all  ideals  and  formulas  whatever. 

But  the  champions  of  moral  anarchy  and  intellectual 
nihilism  have  made  up  for  lost  time,  and  the  books 
I  intend  discussing  in  the  following  notes  contain, 
systematically  or  by  implication,  what  one  might 
call  the  ethics,  the  psychology,  and  the  metaphysics 
of  negation.  These  doctrines  of  the  school  which 
denies  all  schools  and  all  doctrines  are,  as  I  hope  to 
show,  not  of  Mephistophelian  origin.  The  spirit 
which  denies  has  arisen,  in  our  days  at  least,  neither 
from  heartlessness  nor  from  levity.  On  the  contrary, 
and  little  as  the  apostles  of  anarchy  may  suspect 
it,  it  is  from  greater  sensitiveness  to  the  sufferings 
of  others,  and  greater  respect  for  intellectual  sin- 
cerity, that  have  resulted  these  doubts  of  the  methods 
hitherto  devised  for  diminishing  unhappiness  and 
securing  truth.  And  for  this  reason,  if  no  other,  such 
subversive  criticism  ought  to  be  of  the  highest  use  to 
,the  very  notions  and  tendencies  which  it  attacks  :  we 
want  better  laws,  better  formulas,  better  ideals  ;  we 
want  a  wiser  attitude  towards  laws,  formulas,  and  ideals 
in  general ;  and  this  better  we  shall  get  only  by  admit- 
ting that  we  have  not  already  got  the  best. 

Leaving  alone  the  epic  feats  of  the  old  spirit  of 
duty,  the  tragedies  of  Jeanie  Deans  and  Maggie 
Tulliver,  the  lesser,  though  not  less  astonishing, 
heroism  shown  us  in  some  of  Mary  Wilkins's  New 


GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY  17 

England  stories,  we  have  all  of  us  witnessed  the  action 
of  that  moral  training  which  thwarted  personal   pre- 
ferences  and    repugnances,    and    victoriously    silenced 
their   claims.     We  have   all   of  us   heard  of  women 
(particularly  in  the  times  of  our  mothers  and  grand- 
mothers) refusing  the  man  they  loved  and   marrying 
the  man   of  whom  their  parents  approved  ;   we  still 
look  on,  every  day,  at  lives  dragged  along  in  hated 
companionship  ;    at    talents — nay    actual    vocations — 
suppressed  in  deference  to  family  prejudice  or  conveni- 
ence :  acts  of  spiritual  mutilation  so  thorough  as  often 
to  minimise  their  own  suffering,  changing  the  current 
of  life,  atrophying  organic  possibilities  in  such  a  way 
that  the  victim's  subsequent  existence  was  not  actively 
unhappy,  and  not  even  obviously  barren.     Such  things 
still  go  on  all  round  us.     The  difference  now  is  that 
the  minor  sacrifices  are  no  longer  taken  for  granted  by 
all  lookers-on  ;  and  the  grand,  heroic  self-immolation 
no  longer  universally  applauded.     There  has  arisen  (it 
began,  not  without  silly  accompaniments  enough,  and 
disgusting  ones,  in  the  eighteenth  century)  an  active 
suspiciousness    towards   all   systematic  tampering  with 
human  nature.     We  have  had  to  recognise  all  the  mis- 
chief we  have  done  by  always  knowing  better  than  thel->(^ 
mechanical  and  spiritual  forces  of  the  universe  ;  we  are- 
getting  to  believe  more  and  more  in  the  organic,  the 
constitutional,  and  the  unconscious  ;   and  there  is  an 
American  book  (by  the  late  Mr.  Marsh)  on  the  disas- 
trous consequences  of  cutting  down  forests,  draining 
lakes,  and  generally  subverting  natural  arrangements  in 
our  greed  for  immediate  advantages,  which  might  be 
taken,  every  chapter  of  it,  as  an  allegorical  exhibition 


1 8  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

of  the  views  to  which  many  people  are  tending  on  the 
subject  of  religious  and  social  discipline. 

We  have  had  to  recognise,  moreover,  that  a  great 
deal  of  all  the  discipline  and  self-sacrifice  hitherto  so 
universally  recommended  has  been  for  the  benefit  of 
individuals,  and  even  classes,  who  by  no  means  reci- 
procated towards  their  victims  ;  and  we  cannot  deny 
that  there  is  a  grain  of  truth  in  Nietzsche's  contempt  for 
what  he  calls  the  "Ethics  of  Slaves."  And,  finally,  we 
see  very  plainly  that  the  reasonableness  and  facility  of 
thorough-going  self-sacrifice  is  intimately  connected 
with  a  belief  that  such  self-sacrifice  would  be  amply  com- 
pensated in  another  existence  :  it  was  rational  to  give  up 
the  present  for  the  future  ;  it  is  not  rational  to  prefer  a 
future  which  is  problematic  to  a  present  which  alone  is 
quite  certain.  In  this  way  have  all  of  us  who  think  at 
all  begun  to  think  differently  from  our  fathers  ;  indeed, 
we  feel  upon  this  point  even  more  than  we  actually 
think.  We  warn  people  not  to  give  up  their  possi- 
bilities of  activity  and  happiness  in  deference  to  the 
wishes  of  others.  We  almost  unconsciously  collect 
instances  of  such  self-sacrifice  as  has  entailed  the  damage 
of  others,  instances  of  the  tissues  of  the  social  fabric 
being  insidiously  rotted  through  the  destruction  of  one 
of  its  human  cells  ;  and  these  instances,  alas  !  are  usually 
correct  and  to  the  point.  We  even  invent,  or  applaud 
the  invention  of,  other  instances  which  are  decidedly 
far-fetched  :  for  instance,  Mrs.  Alving  producing  her 
son's  hereditary  malady  by  not  acquiescing  more 
openly  in  his  father's  exuberant  joy  of  life  ;  and  Pastor 
Rosmer  destroying,  by  his  scruples,  the  resources  for 
happiness  of  the  less  scrupulous  Rebecca. 


GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY  19 

I  have  chosen  these  examples  on  purpose,  for  they 
have  enabled  me  to  give  a  name  to  these  portions  of 
the  anarchical  tendencies  of  our  day  :  we  are,  all  of  us 
who  look  a  little  around  us  and  feel  a  little  for  others, 
more  or  less  infected  with  Ibsenism;  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious followers  of  the  Ibsenite  gospel  which  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  l  preaches  with  jaunty  fanaticism.  This 
seems,  on  the  whole,  a  very  good  thing.  Except^ 
perhaps,  in  the  question  of  manners,  of  courtesy, 
particularly  between  the  sexes  (aesthetic  superfluities, 
but  which  help  to  make  life  liveable),  I  feel  persuaded 
that  even  the  most  rabid  Ibsenism  will  be  advantageous 
in  the  long  run.  The  more  we  let  nature  work  for  us, 
the  more  we  employ  our  instincts  and  tendencies,  in- 
stead of  thwarting  them,  the  less  will  be  the  waste,  the 
greater  the  achievement.  But  in  all  similar  reactions 
against  past  exaggeration  there  is  apt  to  be  a  drawback ; 
alongside  of  a  great  gain,  a  certain  loss  ;  and  this  we 
should  do  our  utmost  to  minimise.  The  old  conception 
of  duty  was  warped  by  the  fearful  error  of  thinking  that 
/human  nature  is  bad  ;  or,  as  we  moderns  would  express 
\  it,  that  the  instincts  of  the  individual  are  hostile  to  the 
\community.  This  was,  calmly  looked  at,  monstrous. 
But  are  we  not,  perhaps,  on  the  brink  of  a  correspond- 
ing error,  less  enormous  of  course,  but  large  enough  to 
grow  a  fine  crop  of  misery  ?  The  error,  I  mean,  o^ 
taking  for  granted  that  human  nature  is  already  entirely 
good  ;  that  the  instincts,  desires,  nay,  interests  of  the' 
individual  are  necessarily  in  accordance  with  the  good 


1  "The    Quintessence  of  Ibsenism" — and    implicitly  wherever 
else  Ibsenism  is  not  itself  being  attacked  by  G.  B.  S. 


20  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

of  the  community.  The  Ibsenian  theory  is  right  in  saying 
that  there  are  lots  of  people,  a  majority,  even,  who  had 
much  better  have  had  their  own  way.  But  is  the 
Ibsenian  theory  right  in  supposing  that  certain  other 
persons  (and  there  may  be  strands  of  such  in  the  best 
of  us),  persons  like  Captain  Alving,  or  Rebecca  West, 
or  Hedda  Gabler,  or  the  Master  Builder,  would  have 
become  harmless  and  desirable  if  no  one  had  interfered 
with  their  self-indulgence,  their  unscrupulousness,  their 
inborn  love  of  excitement,  or  their  inborn  ^0-mania  ? 
Surely  not.  There  is  not  the  smallest  reason  why  the 
removal  of  moral  stigma  and  of  self-criticising  ideals 
should  reduce  these  people's  peculiar  instincts  (and 
these  people,  I  repeat,  are  mere  types  of  what  is  mixed 
up  in  most  of  us)  to  moderation. 

Nor  is  moderation  the  remedy  for  all  evils.  There 
are  in  us  tendencies  to  feel  and  act  which  survive  from 
times  when  the  mere  preservation  of  individual  and  of 
race  was  desirable  quite  unconditionally  ;  but  which, 
in  our  altered  conditions,  require  not  moderating,  but 
actually  replacing  by  something  more  discriminating, 
less  wasteful  and  mischievous.  Vanity,  for  instance, 
covetousness,  ferocity,  are  surely  destined  to  be  evolved 
away,  the  useful  work  they  once  accomplished  being 
gradually  performed  by  instincts  of  more  recent  growth 
which  spoil  less  in  the  process.  Improvement,  in  the 
moral  life  as  in  any  other,  is  a  matter  of  transforma- 
tion ;  if  we  are  to  use  our  instincts,  our  likings 
and  dislikings,  to  carry  us  from  narrower  circles  of  life 
to  wider  ones,  we  must  work  unceasingly  at  recon- 
stituting those  likings  and  dislikings  themselves. 
Now,  the  evolution  by  which  our  ego  has  become  less 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  21 

incompatible  with  its  neighbours  has  taken  place,  largely, 
by  the  mechanism  of  ideals  and  duties,  of  attaching  to 
certain  acts  an  odium  sufficient  to  counterbalance  their 
attraction,  till  it  has  become  more  and  more  difficult 
to  enjoy  oneself  thoroughly  at  other  folks*  cost.  And 
tm's  Ibsenites  are  apt  to  forget. 

Ibsenites  ask  whether  it  was  not  horrible  that 
Claudio  should  be  put  to  death  because  Isabella  stickled 
about  chastity  ;  that  an  innocent  Effie  Deans  should 
be  hanged  because  Jeanie  had  cut-and-dried  ideas  of! 
veracity  ;  that  Brutus's  son  should  die  because  his 
father  was  so  rigidly  law-abiding.  But  it  would  have 
been  far  more  horrible  for  the  world  at  large  if  people 
had  always  been  ready  to  sacrifice  chastity,  veracity, 
or  legality  to  family  feelings  ;  indeed,  could  such  have 
been  the  case,  the  world,  or  at  least  humankind,  would 
probably  have  gone  to  pieces  before  Claudio,  or  Effie, 
or  the  son  of  Brutus  had  been  born.  Cut-and-dried 
notions  of  conduct  are  probably  exactly  commensurate 
with  moral  slackness.  We  do  not  require  to  deter 
people  from  what  they  do  not  want  to  do,  nor  to 
reward  them  for  what  they  would  do  unrewarded. 
The  very  difficulty  of  acting  spontaneously  in  any 
given  way  demands  the  formation  of  more  or  Jess  un- 
reasoning habits  ;  the  difficulty  of  forming  desirable 
habits  demands  the  coercive  force  of  public  opinion  ; 
and  the  insufficient  power  of  mere  opinion  necessitates 
that  appeal  to  brute  force  which  is  involved  in  all 
application  of  the  law.  The  oversight  of  Ibsenian 
anarchists  (whatever  Ibsen's  individual  views  on  the 
subject)  is  that  of  imagining  that  duties,  ideals,  laws 
can  be  judged  by  examining  their  action  in  the 


22  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

individual  case  ;  for  their  use,  their  evolutional  raison 
d'etre,  is  only  for  the  general  run. 

The   champions   of  the   Will  of  the  Ego,   whether 

t  represented  by  bluff  Bernard  Shaw  or  by  ambiguous 
Maurice  Barres,1  start  from  the  supposition  that  because 
>j  the  individual  is  a  concrete  existence,  while  the  species 
is  obviously  an  abstraction,  the  will  of  the  individual 
can  alone  be  a  reality,  and  the  will  of  the  species  must 
be  a  figment.  They  completely  forget  that  there  is 
not  one  concrete  individual,  but  an  infinite  number 
of  concrete  individuals,  and  that  what  governs  the 
world  is,  therefore,  the  roughly  averaged  will  of  all  these 
concrete  individuals.  The  single  individual  may  will 
to  live  as  hard  as  he  can,  will  to  expand,  assimilate, 
reproduce,  cultivate  his  moi,  or  anything  else  besides ; 
but  the  accomplishment  of  that  Will  of  his — nay,  the 
bare  existence  of  himself  and  his  Will — depends  entirely 
upon  the  Will  of  the  species.  Without  the  permission 
of  that  abstract  entity  which  he  considers  a  figment, 
the  concrete  and  only  really  real  individual  would  never 
have  realised  his  individual  existence  at  all.  This  is 
not  saying  that  his  own  will  is  not  to  react  against  the 
will  of  the  species  ;  for  the  will  of  the  species  is  merely 
the  averaged  will  of  its  component  individuals,  and  as 
the  individual  will  alters,  so  must  the  averaged  will 
differ.  The  opinions  and  ideals  and  institutions  of  the 
present  and  the  future  are  unconsciously,  and  in  some 
cases  consciously,  modified,  however  infinitesimally,  by 
the  reactions  of  every  living  man  and  woman  ;  and  the 

1  "L'Ennemi  des  Lois,"  "Le  Jardin  de  Berenice,"  "  Un  Homme 
Libre." 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  23 

more  universal  this  atomic  individual  modification,  the 
higher  the  civilisation,  the  greater  the  bulk  of  happiness 
attained  and  attainable.  Meanwhile  ideals,  command- 
ments, institutions  are,  each  for  its  own  time,  so  many 
roads,  high  roads,  if  not  royal  roads,  to  the  maximum 
of  good  behaviour  possible  in  any  given  condition. 
Without  them,  people  would  have  to  carry  their 
virtuous  potentialities  through  bogs  and  briars,  where 
most  of  them  would  remain  sticking.  Succeeding 
generations,  knowing  more  of  the  soil  and  employing 
more  accurate  measurements,  making,  moreover,  free 
use  of  blasting  powder,  may  build  shorter  and  easier 
roads,  along  which  fewer  persons  will  die ;  roads  also 
in  a  greater  variety  of  directions,  that  every  one  may 
get  near  his  real  destination.  And  the  more  each 
individual  keeps  his  eyes  open  to  the  inconveniences 
and  dangers  of  the  existing  roads  to  righteousness,  and 
airs  his  criticisms  thereof,  the  better  :  for  the  majority, 
which  is  as  slow  as  the  individual  is  quick,  is  not  likely 
to  destroy  the  old  thoroughfares  before  having  made 
itself  new  ones.  The  Ibsenite  anarchists  are  right  in 
reminding  us  that  there  is  really  nothing  holy  in  such 
a  road  ;  for  holiness  is  a  quality,  not  of  institutions, 
but  of  character,  and  a  man  can  be  equally  holy  along 
a  new  road  as  along  an  old  one  ;  alas  !  as  holy  along 
a  wrong  road  as  along  a  right  one.  But  we,  on  the 
other  hand,  must  remind  the  Ibsenites  that  new  or  old, 
right  or  wrong,  such  high  roads  are  high  roads  to  the 
advantage  not  always  of  the  single  individual  at  any 
given  moment,  but  of  the  majority  at  most  times,  or, 
at  least,  of  the  majority  composed  of  the  most  typical 
individuals. 


24  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 


II 


After  our  doubts  regarding  the  validity  of  the  ideals 
and  institutions  to  which  society  expects  each  individual 
voluntarily  to  conform,  come  doubts,  even  more  neces- 
sary and  natural,  concerning  the  majesty  of  the  methods 
by  which  society  enforces  its  preference  on  such  indivi- 
duals as  fail  to  conform  spontaneously  thereunto. 

Such  doubts  as  these  are  by  no  means  due  to  the 
growth  of  sympathy  only,  to  what  is  called,  and  some- 
times really  is,  mere  sentimental  weakness.  Together 
with  disbelief  in  a  theologically  appointed  universe,  we 
have  witnessed  the  growth  of  respect  both  for  fact  and 
for  logic  ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  we  no  longer  regard 
the  infringement  of  a  human  law  as  the  rebellion  to  the 
will  of  God.  We  have  replaced  the  notion  of  sin  by 
the  notion  of  crime  ;  and  the  particular  act  which  we 
happen  to  call  a  crime  is  no  longer,  in  our  eyes,  a 
detached  and  spontaneously  generated  fact  in  a  single 
individual  character,  but  the  result  of  a  dozen  converg- 
ing causes,  of  which  this  individual  character  may  be 
only  one,  while  the  constitution  of  surrounding  society 
is  sure  to  be  another  of  the  determinants.  We  re- 
cognise also  that  while,  on  the  one  hand,  the  capacity 
for  committing  certain  acts  intolerable  to  the  majority 
does  not  imply  utter  worthlessness  in  many  other 
directions ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  thorough-going 
perversity  which  renders  an  individual  criminal  an 
unmitigated  evil  to  his  fellow-creatures  involves  con- 
stitutional and  irresistible  tendencies  which  are  incom- 
patible with  any  notion  of  responsibility.  All  this 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  25 

comes  to  saying  that  the  coercion  and  punishment  of 
offenders  has  become  a  question  not  of  morality,  but 
of  police  ;  that  it  has  ceased  to  be  a  sort  of  holy  sacri- 
fice to  God,  and  grown  to  be  a  rough-and-ready  way 
of  getting  rid  of  a  nuisance.  And  this  has  altered  our 
feelings  from  the  self-complacency  of  a  priest  to  the 
humiliation  of  an  unwilling  scavenger.  We  are  getting 
a  little  ashamed  of  the  power  to  imprison,  bully,  outlaw, 
destroy  either  life  or  life's  possibilities,  which  constitutes 
the  secular  arm  of  all  theoretic  morality. 

Is  such  a  feeling  mistaken  ?  Surely  only  inasmuch 
as  it  would  turn  a  desirable  possibility  for  the  future 
into  an  unmanageable  actuality  in  the  present.  For, 
however  much  we  may  admit  that  bodily  violence,  and 
the  kind  of  discipline  dependent  thereupon,  are  neces- 
sary in  the  present,  and  will  be  necessary  for  longer 
than  we  dare  foresee  in  the  future,  we  must  open  our 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  all  progress  represents  a  constant 
diminution  thereof.  Similarly  we  must  be  careful  that\  ( 
all  our  methods  (even  the  methods  including  autho- 
ritativeness  and  violence)  shall  tend  to  the  eventual 
disappearance  of  violence  towards  human  beings  and 
authoritativeness  towards  adults  ;  violence  remaining 
our  necessary  method  with  brutes  and  authoritativeness 
with  children,  but  even  in  these  relations  diminishing, 
to  the  utmost.  For  violence,  and  the  discipline 
founded  on  violence  (as  distinguished  from  self-discipline 
sprung  from  intelligence  and  adaptability)  means  not 
merely  suffering,  but  wastefulness  worse  than  suffering, 
because  it  entails  it :  waste  of  the  possibilities  of  adapta- 
tion in  him  who  exerts  it,  as  well  as  of  constitutional 
improvement  in  him  who  suffers  from  it.  Waste  above 


26  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

all  of  the  Reality,  the  reality  which  must  be  slightly 
different  in  every  individual  case,  reality  containing  the 
possibilities  of  new  arrangements  and  new  faculties  ; 
reality  which  we  cruelly  disregard  whenever  we  treat 
individual  cases  as  merely  typical,  whenever  we  act  on 
the  one  half  of  a  case  containing  similarity,  and  neglect 
the  other  half  of  the  case  containing  difference.  Such 
wastefulness  of  method  is  necessary  just  in  proportion 
as  we  are  deficient  in  the  power  of  seeing,  feeling, 
sympathising,  discriminating ;  deficient  in  the  power  of 
selecting,  preferring,  and  postponing.  Violence  over 
body  and  over  mind ;  violence  against  the  will  of 
others  ;  violence  against  fact  :  these  represent  the 
friction  in  the  imperfect  machinery  of  life  ;  and  pro- 
gress is  but  the  substitution  of  human  mechanism  more 
and  more  delicate  and  solid,  through  which  the  move- 
ment is  ever  greater,  the  friction  ever  less. 

Meanwhile,  do  we  possess  a  human  mechanism  as 
good  as  it  might  be?  Tolstoi,  Ibsen,  the  author  of 
the  very  suggestive  dialogues  on  Anarchy  and  Law, 
even  egoistic  decadents  like  Maurice  Barres,  the  whole 
heterogeneous  crusade  of  doubt  and  rebellion,  are 
doing  good  work  in  showing  that  we  have  not ;  in 
forcing  us  to  consider  what  proportions  of  subtlety 
and  clumsiness,  of  movement  and  of  friction,  of  utility 
and  waste,  are  represented  by  the  system  of  coercion 
and  punishment  accepted  in  our  days.  And  such  an 
examination  will  surely  prove  that  in  this  matter  we 
have  developed  our  ingenuity  less  (sometimes  atrophied 
it),  and  proceeded  with  far  greater  hurry  and  sloven- 
liness than  with  any  of  the  other  products  of  civilisation. 
Try  and  imagine  where  building,  agriculture,  manu- 


GOSPELS  OF   ANARCHY  27 

facture,  any  of  the  most  common  crafts  would  be,  had 
it  been  carried  on  throughout  the  centuries  as  we  still 
carry  on  the  moralisation  of  mankind  ;  if  stone,  brick, 
soil,  manure,  raw  material,  let  alone  the  physical  and 
chemical  laws,  had  been  treated  in  the  rough-and-ready 
manner  in  which  we  treat  human  thought  and  impulse ! 
But  the  fact  is  that  we  have  required  food,  clothing, 
and  shelter  so  bitterly  hitherto,  that  all  our  best  intelli- 
gence and  energy  have  gone  to  diminish  wastefulness 
in  their  production  ;  and  no  time  has  remained,  no 
power  of  discrimination,  for  making  the  best  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  qualities.  Indeed,  we  have  dealt, 
and  we  deal  only,  with  the  bad  moral  qualities  of  man- 
kind ;  those  that  can  be  seen  in  spare  five  minutes  and 
with  a  rushlight  ;  nay,  those  which  are  stumbled  over  fifajbjL 
in  the  dark  and  kicked  into  corners.  We  may  hope 
for  improvement  almost  in  proportion  as  we  recognise 
that  punishment  is  the  expression  not  of  responsibility 
towards  heaven  on  the  part  of  the  malefactor,  but  of 
incapacity  and  hurry  on  the  part  of  those  whom  the 
malefactor  damages.  For  here  even  as  in  the  question 
of  duties  and  ideals,  what  we  are  suffering  from  is  lack 
of  discrimination,  paucity  of  methods,  insufficiency  of 
formulas  ;  and  what  we  want  is  not  less  law,  but  more 
law  :  law  which  will  suit  the  particular  case  which  is  a 
reality  and  has  results,  not  merely  the  general  run,  I 
which  is  an  abstraction  and  takes  care  of  itself. 


Ill 

Out  of  these  various  doubts  about  standards  of  con- 
duct and    social    arrangements    there    arises    gradually 


28  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

a  central  core  of  doubt,  to  which  the  others  can  be 
logically  reduced ;  the  doubt,  namely,  whether  the 
individuality  is  not  cramped,  enfeebled,  rendered  unfit 
for  life,  by  obedience  to  any  kind  of  abstraction,  to 
anything  save  its  own  individual  tendencies.  Oddly 
enough,  the  psychological  theory  had  in  this  matter 
preceded  the  thorough-going  practical  application  ;  and 
the  implicit  principles  of  subsequent  anarchical  views 
were  expressed  by  the  earliest  and  least  read  of  anarchist 
writers,  Max  Stirner  (Kaspar  Schmidt),1  who  died  so 
long  ago  as  1856. 

Max  Stirner  builds  up  his  s_ystem — for  his  hatred  of 
system  is  expressed  in  elaborately  systematic  form — 
upon  the  notion  that  the  Geist,  the  intellect  which  forms 
conceptions,  is  a  colossal  cheat  for  ever  robbing  the 
individual  of  its  due,  and  marring  life  by  imaginary 
obstacles  ;  a  wicked  sort  of  Archimago,  whose  phantas- 
magoria, duly,  ideal,  vocation,  aim,  law,  formula,  can  be 
described  only  by  the  untranslatable  German  word 
Spuk,  a  decidedly  undignified  haunting  by  bogies. 
Against  this  kingdom  of  delusion  the  human  individual 
— der  Einzige — has  been,  since  the  beginning  of  time, 
slowly  and  painfully  fighting  his  way  ;  never  attaining 
to  any  kind  of  freedom,  but  merely  exchanging  one 
form  of  slavery  for  another,  slavery  to  the  religious 
delusion  for  slavery  to  the  metaphysic  delusion,  slavery 
to  divine  right  for  slavery  to  civic  liberty  ;  slavery  to 
dogma,  commandment,  heaven  and  hell,  for  slavery  to 
sentiment,  humanity,  progress ;  all  equally  mere  words, 
conceits,  figments,  by  which  the  wretched  individual 

1   "  Der  Einzige  und  sein  Eigenthum." 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  29 

has  allowed  himself  to  be  coerced  and  martyrised  :  the 
wretched  individual  who  alone  is  a  reality. 

This  is  the  darkest,  if  not  the  deepest,  pit  of  anar- 
chical thought  ;  and  through  its  mazes  Stirner  drags 
us  round  and  round  for  as  long  a  time  as  Kant  requires 
for  his  Categories,  or  the  Mediaeval  Monk  for  the 
imitation  of  Christ — both  of  which,  by  the  way,  are 
good  examples  of  Spuk.  But  even  as  Dante  clambered 
out  of  hell  by  continuing  the  way  he  had  come  down, 
so  we  also  can  emerge  from  Stirner's  negations  by 
pursuing  the  arguments  which  had  led  into  them. 
And,  having  got  to  the  individual  as  the  only  and 
original  reality,  we  can  work  our  way  back  to  those 
subsidiary  and  contingent  realities,  the  individual's 
duties,  ideals,  and  institutions. 

There  is  nothing  real,  says  Stirner,  but  the  various 
conditions  of  the  individual  ;  the  rest  is  delusion, 
Spuk.  But  if  only  the  ego  is  real,  how  can  anything 
else  interfere  with  it?  If  such  abstractions  and  fig- 
ments as  God,  State,  Family,  Morality  (or  whatever 
the  name  of  the  particular  bogy),  can  cramp,  cabin, 
maim  our  individuality  ;  then,  since  our  individuality 
alone  has  reality,  these  various  delusions  must  be 
a  part  of  our  individuality.  Free  yourselves,  says 
Stirner,  from  your  own  ideas.  But  our  ideas,  whether 
spontaneously  generated  in  ourselves  or  assimilated 
from  others,  must,  in  order  to  have  real  powers  such 
as  we  attribute  to  them,  be  a  part  of  ourself :  and  if 
we  sacrifice  any  other  part  of  ourself  to  those  ideas,  it 
is  a  proof  that  they,  and  not  the  sacrificed  part,  must 
be,  at  that  particular  conjunction  of  circumstances, 
the  dominant  part  of  our  ego.  Stirner's  psychology 


30  GOSPELS  OF   ANARCHY 

admits  love  for  individuals  as  a  determinant  of  action  ; 
and  similarly  regard  for  the  reciprocity  of  self-interest. 
But  is  not  love  for  mankind,  however  vague  the  man- 
kind, and  regard  for  principle,  however  abstract  the 
principle,  quite  as  much  a  real  active  power  of  our 
nature  ?  If  Stirner  is  made  uncomfortable,  as  he  says, 
by  the  frown  on  the  face  of  his  beloved,  and  "kisses 
the  frown  away  " — to  rid  himself  of  his  discomfort ; 
why,  so  are  other  egos — less  numerous,  but  not  less  real 
— made  uncomfortable  by  the  look  of  pain  in  men  and 
women  whom  they  do  not  care  for,  nay,  by  the  mere 
knowledge  that  men  and  women,  even  animals,  whom 
they  have  never  seen,  are  suffering,  or  are  likely  to 
suffer  :  and,  in  certain  egos — rarest,  but  most  effica- 
ciously real — there  will  arise  an  impulse — yes,  some- 
thing so  irresistibly  real  as  a  constitutional  impulse — to 
sacrifice  everything  for  the  sake  of  diminishing  that 
unseen,  that  possible  suffering  :  suffering  present  in 
hospitals,  in  factories,  in  slums,  in  prisons,  or  future 
suffering  in  hell. 

And  similarly  there  are  egos  which  are  made  as 
wretched  by  the  neglect  of  some  civic  or  religious  duty 
as  Stirner  could  possibly  be  by  skipping  a  meal  or  losing 
a  night's  sleep.  It  is  quite  a  different  question  whether 
such  ideas  as  these,  ideas  whose  coercive  power  reveals 
them  an  integral  part  of  the  ego,  happen  or  not  to  coin- 
cide with  the  courses  most  desirable  for  the  total 
welfare  either  of  one  single  ego  or  of  a  great  number 
of  egos.  The  point  at  issue  is  whether  or  not  such 
active  factors  in  life  can  be  treated  as  separate  from  life 
itself ;  it  is  a  different  question  similarly  whether  any 
more  egoistic  preference,  say  for  alcohol  or  gambling, 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  31 

happens  in  the  long  run  to  tally  with  *the  ego's  ad- 
vantage. Stirner,  indeed,  entrenches  himself  behind 
the  notion  that  wherever  there  exists  any  kind  of  over- 
mastering desire,  need,  or  idea,  the  ego  ceases  to  exist. 
But,  as  a  psychological  fact,  at  any  given  moment  of 
reality,  some  desire,  need,  or  idea,  or  group  of  desires, 
needs,  or  ideas,  must  inevitably  be  having  the  mastery, 
otherwise  impulse  would  disappear  and  action  of  all 
kinds  cease.  For  the  ego  which  refuses  to  be  dominated 
by  any  particular  idea  or  any  particular  desire,  be  it 
externalised  as  humanity,  duty,  or  merely  tobacco  or 
bottle,  is  an  ego  dominated  by  some  other  idea  or  desire, 
by  the  idea  or  desire  that  it  ought  to  be  free  from  such 
domination  in  particular,  or  from  all  conscious  domina- 
tion in  general.  But  as  to  an  ego  which,  at  any  given 
moment,  is  otherwise  than  dominated  by  some  feeling, 
impulse,  or  thought,  that  kind  of  ego  is,  oddly  enough, 
exactly  the  thing  which  Stirner  is  waging  war  against — 
an  abstraction,  a  nonentity,  a  figment  of  logic,  of  which 
we  have  no  practical  experience.  Yes,  indeed,  nothing 
but  the  ego  is  efficient ;  since,  to  be  efficient,  everything 
else  must  have  been  absorbed  into  or  must  impinge 
upon  it. 

This  anarchical  psychology  of  Stirner's  (and  some- 
thing similar,  however  unformulated,  exists  in  the  mind 
also  of  Maurice  Barres  and  of  Bernard  Shaw)  brings 
home  to  me  how  much  we  stand  in  need  of  a  new 
science  of  will,  thought,  and  emotion  ;  or,  rather,  of 
the  practical  application  of  such  a  science  of  the  soul 
as  recent  years  have  already  given  us.  It  would  put 
us  equally  above  the  new-fangled  theories  of  freeing  the 
ego  by  abolishing  ideals  and  habits,  and  above  the  old- 


32  GOSPELS  OF   ANARCHY 

fashioned  notions  of  thwarting  the  ego  in  the  name  of 
morality.  For  it  would  show  that  the  ego  is  not  the 
separate  momentary  impulse,  but  the  organic  hierarchy 
of  united  and  graduated  impulses ;  a  unity  which  being 
evolved  by  contact  with  similar  unities,  can  be  made 
as  harmonious  with  them  as  the  mere  separate  impulses, 
referring  to  mere  partial  and  momentary  relations,  are 
likely  to  be  the  reverse.  This  being  understood,  we 
shall  seek  less  for  the  outer  discipline,  the  constraining 
of  the  individual  by  society,  than  for  the  inner  discip- 
line, the  subordination  of  the  individual's  lesser  and 
,.  also  less  durable  motives  to  the  greater  and  more 
durable.  We  shall,  once  we  have  really  conceived  this 
organic  unity  of  the  individual,  desist  from  our  waste- 
ful and  cruel  attempts  to  reduce  all  men  to  one  pattern, 
to  extract  from  all  the  same  kind  of  service.  But  in 
such  healthy  development  of  the  ego,  in  such  organic, 
inner  discipline,  the  conscious  reference  to  standards, 
the  conscious  desire  for  harmony,  will  be  an  indispen- 
sable means.  Duties  and  ideals  will  again  be  valued 
above  all  things  ;  not,  indeed,  as  intellectual  formulas, 
but  as  factors  of  habitual  emotional  conditions.  For 
the  chief  value  of  duty  or  ideal  is  the  capacity  fostered 
thereby  of  being  dutiful,  of  acting  in  accordance  with 
an  ideal.  Among  the  great  gifts  for  which  we  must 
thank  the  theological  systems  of  the  past,  the  Puritan 
element  in  every  creed,  the  most  valuable  are  not  the 
'  'tables  of  permissions  and  prohibitions,  always  variable, 
and  still  very  rough  and  ready.  The  splendid  work 
of  Puritanism  is  the  training,  nay,  the  conception,  of 
a  real  individuality,  the  habit  of  self-dominion,  of  post- 
poning, foregoing  the  immediate,  momentary  and 


GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY  33 

temporal  for  the  sake  of  a  distant,  permanent,  and,  in- 
asmuch as  intellectually  recognised,  spiritual  something. 
The  moral  value  or  Jeanie  Deans  is  not  in  her  con- 
viction that  under  no  circumstances  must  a  lie  be  told 
(although  her  conviction  was  correct  in  999  cases  out 
of  1,000),  but  in  her  incapacity  of  telling  a  lie  so  long 
as  she  was  convinced  against  it.  Puritanism  is  psycho- 
logically right  in  its  implicit  recognition  of  the  supe- 
riority of  the  habitual  condition  of  feeling  over  the 
transient  impulse.  For  what  I  habitually  wish  to  be  I 
represents,  or  ought  to  represent,  the  bulk  of  my  nature 
and  organisation  more  really  than  what  at  a  given 
moment  I  actually  am.  If  individualism  is  to  triumph, 
if  any  good  is  to  come  (and  it  doubtless  will)  out  ot 
contemporary  anarchic  theories  of  the  ego,  it  will  be 
by  an  increase  rather  than  a  diminution  of  the  healthy 
Puritan  element.  It  is,  after  all,  the  Puritans  in 
temper  who  have  done  all  successful  rebellion  against 
items  of  Puritan  codes  ;  whereas  the  egoist  of  the 
modern  type  is,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  the  sort  of 
person  who  tolerates  evil  for  want  of  the  self-discipline 
and  consistency  necessary  to  stop  it. 


IV 


After  the  psychology  of  anarchy  comes  its  meta- 
physics, or,  I  would  almost  say,  its  theology.  Theology, 
because,  not  satisfied  with  appealing  to  our  reason,  it 
meddles  with  the  instincts  which  seek  for  the  quality 
we  call  divine,  and  for  the  emotions  that  quality 
awakens ;  and  theology  also,  because  it  occasionally 

3 


34 


GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY 


' 


even  suggests  the  making  of  new  gods,  the  creation 
of  a  strange  metaphorical  Olympus.  Like  all  other 
theology,  it  is  esoteric  and  exoteric  ;  it  has  its  treatises 
of  highest  metaphysical  subtlety  ;  and  its  little  popular 
catechisms,  quite  full  of  explicit  absurdities.  Such  a 
catechism  as  this  was  made  up  by  the  late  J.  A. 
Symonds  out  of  the  opinions,  or  what  he  took  to  be 
the  opinions,  of  Walt  Whitman.  It  is  the  declaration 
,jfc  fof  the  equal  rights  and  equal  dignity  of  all  the  parts  of 
man's  nature  ;  and  implicity  therefore  of  the  foolish- 
ness of  all  the  hierarchies  which  various  creeds  and 
various  systems  of  ethics  have  set  up  in  the  soul  and 
the  life  of  mankind.  It  is  characteristically  different 
in  tone  from  the  anarchical  utterances  of  the  egotistic 
decadent  Barres  and  the  metaphysical  Nihilist  Stirner  ; 
it  is  eminently  Anglo-Saxon  in  a  sort  of  unconscious 
optimistic  cant.  Its  subversiveness  consists  in  an 
attempt  to  set  things  right ;  but  it  does  so,  not  by 
pleading  that  nothing  is  evil,  but  rather  by  insisting 
that  everything  is  good.  The  democratic  view,  as  it 
is  called,  of  Whitman,  as  expounded  by  Symonds, 
consists  in  asserting  that  all  things  are  equally  divine. 

Now  if  you  start  with  identifying  divine  with 
divinely  ordained,  and  identify  the  Divinity  with  the 
bare  fact  of  existence,  then  all  things  are  certainly 
portions  of  the  Divinity,  and,  in  so  far,  divine.  But 
if  all  things  are  in  this  sense  divine,  then  divine  ceases 
to  be  a  quality  which  evokes  any  sense  of  preference  ; 
then  divine  is  no  longer  an  expression  commensurate 
with  esteem,  still  less  legitimately  productive  of 
emotional  satisfaction  ;  if  all  things  are  divine,  why 
then  some  may  be  divine  and  honourable  and  others 


GOSPELS  OF  ANARCHY  35 

divine  and  dishonourable.  There  is  something  akin 
in  this  anarchic  theology  to  the  juggling  with  the  word 
value  of  Karl  Marx  and  his  followers.  It  is  the 
acceptance  of  the  emotional  quality  of  a  word  after 
emptying  out  the  meaning  which  had  produced  it. 
Good,  noble,  divine  ;  a  hierarchy  of  words  denoting 
such  qualities  as  we  think  especially  desirable  ;  denot- 
ing the  fuller  possession  of  that  which  we  esteem  most 
highly  in  ourselves,  be  it  strength  or  beauty,  moral 
or  intellectual  helpfulness;  words  which  awaken 
in  our  mind  the  sense  of  approval,  of  respect,  and 
finally  of  reverence  and  wonder.  Perform  a  little 
sleight-of-hand,  and  shuffle  divinity  with  God,  God 
with  Nature,  Nature  with  Being,  and  you  contrive 
to  awaken  that  emotion  of  rareness,  superiority, 
wonderfulness,  in  connection  with  .  .  .  with  what  ? 
O  irony  of  self-delusion  !  with  everything  equally. 

This  subversion  of  all  appreciation  is  the  furthest 
possible  from  being,  as  Whitman  seems  to  have 
imagined,  and  as  Symonds  reiterates,  a  highly  scientific 
thought.  For  science  teaches  us  that  all  life,  and 
especially  the  life  we  human  beings  call  progress,  is 
not  a  mere  affirmation,  so  to  speak,  of  mere  passive 
being,  of  "  what  is — is  " — but  a  selection  and  rejec- 
tion, the  perpetual  assertion  of  fitness  against  unfitness, 
a  constant  making  of  inequality.  To  our  feelings, 
and  to  our  mind  (unless  it  become  a  word  without 
intellectual  and  emotional  meaning)  the  divine  is  the 
supremely  desirable.  According  to  our  condition 
that  desirable  has  inevitably  shifted  quarters,  but  it  has 
always  been,  and  must  always  be,  the  exceptional,  the 
exceptional  which  becomes,  perhaps,  by  dint  of  our 


36 


GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY 


seeking  it,  the  rule ;  our  desires  being  set  free  to 
seek  something  new,  some  other  rare  thing  which  we 
would  fain  make  common.  And  in  this  way  our 
spiritual  progress  has  consisted,  most  probably,  in  the 
gradual  relegation  to  the  obscure,  half-conscious, 
automatic  side  of  our  nature  of  instincts  and  functions 
which  have  once  been  uppermost  ;  in  the  gradual 
raising  of  the  level  of  the  desirable,  the  contemplated, 
above  the  necessities  of  the  moment  and  the  body, 
above  the  interest  of  the  ego.  There  is  no  place  for 
democracy  a  la  Whitman  in  the  soul ;  its  law  is  co- 
ordination, subordination,  hierarchy. 

The  "  Theories  of  Anarchy  and  Law,"  of  Mr. 
H.  B.  Brewster,  is  unknown  to  the  public  just  in  propor- 
tion, I  should  say,  to  its  merits.  It  takes  no  ordinary 
reader  to  appreciate  its  subtlety  of  analysis  and  boldness 
of  hypothesis.  And  the  marvellous  impartiality  which 
sees  every  side  of  every  argument  equally,  and  refrains 
from  all  judgment,  is  positively  distressing  even  to 
the  most  admiring  reader,  who  seeks  in  vain  for 
something  to  attack  or  to  espouse,  who  gropes,  blinded 
by  excess  of  light,  for  the  unclutchable  personality  of 
the  author.  Behind  which  of  the  speakers  of  these 
dialogues  shall  we  look  for  him  ?  At  which  moment 
does  he  shift  from  the  one  side  to  the  other  ?  Is  Mr. 
Brewster  on  the  whole  for  or  against  intellectual  and 
ethical  Nihilism  ?  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  book  is  on 
the  whole  a  perfect  gospel  of  anarchy,  because,  in 
the  first  place,  the  anarchical  opinions,  although  they 
represent  only  one  quarter  of  the  doctrines  represented, 
are  those  we  are  least  accustomed  to  and  consequently 
most  impressed  by  ;  and  because,  in  the  second  place, 


GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY  37 

the  very  impartiality,  the  refusal  to  decide,  to 
commend  and  condemn,  leaves  an  impression  of  the 
utter  vanity  of  all  formula  and  all  system. 

It  is,  therefore,  only  as   an  expression  of  anarchic 
tendencies  that   I  wish,  in  this  connection,  to  mention 

'      f    I  ^r 

the  book.  And  principally  because  it  affords,  in  the 
most  remarkable  form,  the  key-note  of  what  I  should 
call  the  transcendental  theology  of  anarchy.  I  use 
the  word  theology  once  more  advisedly.  For  Mr. 
Brewster  has  separated  from  the  various  practical 
and  speculative  items  which  held  it  in  solution,  and 
distilled  into  the  subtlest  essence,  a  transcendental 
principle  which  lurks,  however  unperceived,  in  all 
anarchic  writings,  a  transcendental  equivalent  of  the 
old  Persian  and  Manichean  dualism.  At  the  end 
of  all  the  doubts,  doubts  about  ideals,  duties,  institu- 
tions, formulas,  whether  they  are  good  or  evil,  arises 
the  final  doubt :  have  we  a  right  to  prefer  good  to 
evil  ?  Does  the  universe  live  only  in  the  being 
of  God  ;  does  the  universe  not  live  equally  in  the 
being  of  Satan  ?  The  pessimistic  philosophers  of 
our  century  have  accustomed  us  to  conceive  of  forces 
in  creation  which  are  irreconcileable  with  benevolence. 
The  later  Darwinism  is  training  us  to  perceive  that 
in  the  process  of  evolution  there  is,  alongside  of  the 
selection  of  the  fittest,  the  rendering  even  unfitter  ' 
of  the  initially  unfit,  degenerative  tendencies  as  well  ' , 
as  tendencies  to  adaptation.  We  have  had  to  admit 
that  destruction  is  a  factor  in  all  construction.  The  ' 
doubt  arises,  may  not  destruction  be  just  as  great  a 
power  as  construction  ?  Not  as  its  servant,  but  as  its 
rival,  its  equal.  Are  we  not  Pharisees  in  condemning 


38  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

all  persons  and  instincts  unsuitable,  forsooth,  to  the 
purposes  of  our  race  and  civilisation,  when  those 
persons  and  instincts  are  as  much  realities  as  any 
others  ?  Are  we  not  Philistines  in  condemning  all 
views  of  life  which  do  not  square  with  our  particular 
intellectual  organisation  ?  Is  not  what  we  call  evil 
a  reality,  and  does  chaos  perhaps  not  exist  as  truly 
as  order  ?  Shall  we  not  recognise  the  great  dualism  ? 
By  no  means.  We  are  so  constituted  that  evil 
cannot  please  nor  chaos  satisfy  us  ;  and  our  consti- 
tution must  be,  for  us,  the  law  of  the  universe. 
For  we  conceive  the  universe  only  in  terms  of  our 
own  existence,  and  the  qualities  we  attribute  to  it 
are  only  modes  of  our  own  feeling.  All  we  can 
be  sure  of  about  good  and  evil,  chaos  and  order,  is 
that  they  are  conceptions  of  ours.  Are  they  concep- 
tions, and  it  so,  to  what  extent  corresponding,  of 
anything  else  ?  We  cannot  tell.  What  we  call  forces 
of  destruction  and  disorder  are  such  to  us  ;  nay,  they 
are  forces  perhaps  only  to  us  ;  it  is  only  through  our 
own  aversion  that  we  know  of  destruction  and  disorder 
at  all.  The  origin  of  all  such  doubts,  and  their 
solution  also,  lies  in  the  nature  of  the  doubter.  In 
the  little  world  which  our  faculties,  our  spiritual  and 
practical  needs,  as  well  as  our  bodily  senses,  have 
created  for  us  out  of  the  infinite  unknown  universe, 
it  is  our  human  instincts  which  decide,  as  they  have 
determined,  everything.  And  among  the  ideas  they 
have  set  on  foot  they  decide  for  good  against  evil, 
for  order  against  chaos. 

These    discussions    on     anarchy    and     law,     these 


GOSPELS   OF  ANARCHY  39 

struggles  between  what  we  have  and  what  we  want, 
should  give  a  result  more  practically  important  than 
even  the  most  important  application  in  practice  ;  for, 
in  our  life,  a  habit  of  feeling  and  thinking,  an  attitude, 
is  of  wider  influence  than  a  rule  of  conduct.  The 
attempt  to  verify  our  moral  compass,  the  deliberate 
readiness  to  do  so,  might  result  in  the  safest  kind 
of  spiritual  peace.  For,  to  be  able  to  see  in  all  that 
we  call  bad,  wrong,  false,  the  cause  and  effect,  the 
immense  naturalness  and  inevitableness,  its  place  in 
the  universe  as  distinguished  from  its  place  in  our 
own  liking  or  convenience  ;  to  be  able  to  face  fact 
as  fact,  as  something  transcending  all  momentary 
convenience  or  pleasantness  ;  yet  at  the  same  time 
to  preserve  our  human  preferences,  to  exercise  our 
human  selection  all  the  more  rigidly  because  we  know 
that  it  is  our  selection,  reality  offering  more,  but 
we  accepting  only  what  we  choose  ;  such  a  double 
attitude  would  surely  be  the  best.  It  would  be  the 
only  attitude  thoroughly  true,  just,  kind,  and  really 
practical,  giving  us  peace  and  dignity  and  energy  for 
struggle  without  hoodwinking  or  arrogance.  It  would 

&F+ 


be  more  respectful  both  to  our  own  nature,  and  to  the  \  &F+Q& 
nature  which  transcends  ours,  to  recognise  that  what  j&rCtA*/ 
mankind  wants  it  wants  because  it  is  mankind  ;  and 
to  leave  off  claiming  from  the  universe  conformity  to, 
human  ideals  and  methods. 

The  sense  of  this  (however  vague)  has  been 
furthered  by  occasional  fortunate  conditions  of  civili- 
sation, and  it  is,  most  probably,  constitutional  in 
certain  happily  balanced  natures.  It  is  what  gives 
the  high  serenity  to  men  of  the  stamp  of  Plato  and 


40  GOSPELS   OF   ANARCHY 

Goethe  and  Browning ;  they  can  touch  everything, 
discuss  everything,  understand  the  reason  of  every- 
thing, yet  remain  with  preferences  unaltered.  Perhaps 
we  may  all  some  day  attain,  by  employing  equally 
our  tendencies  to  doubt  and  our  tendencies  to  believe, 
to  such  a  fearless,  yet  modest,  recognition  of  what  is, 
and  also  of  what  we  wish  it  to  be. 


EMERSON    AS    A    TEACHER    OF 
LATTER-DAY    TENDENCIES 


EMERSON    AS    A    TEACHER    OF   LATTER- 
DAY  TENDENCIES 


I 


IN  the  following  notes  upon  Emerson  no  attempt 
has  been  made  to  assign  him  his  place  in  the 
kingdom  of  thought  and  expression,  either  by  tracing 
his  spiritual  generations  and  kinships,  or  by  comparing 
him  quality  by  quality — so  much  more  or  less  of 
intuition,  logic,  synthesis  and  analysis  —  with  the 
thinkers  who  seem  measurable  in  the  same  scales. 
Still  less,  to  account  for  the  peculiarities  of  the  work 
by  the  peculiarities  of  the  man,  of  his  nation  and  times. 
The  relation  I  should  wish  to  set  forth  is  that 
between  Emerson's  writings,  and  one  of  their  readers — 
myself.  For  the  relation  between  writer  and  reader, 
where  such  really  exists,  implies  the  originating  of 
ideas  and  states  of  feeling  such  as  did  not  exist  in 
either  reader  or  writer  taken  singly,  the  latent  pecu- 
liarities of  the  one  being  vitalised  and  altered  by  the 
fruitful  contact  of  the  other.  The  thought,  the  feeling 
thus  generated  may  be  far  from  uncommon,  and  may 
be  shortlived  and  comparatively  barren  ;  but  it  is  an 
organic  particle  of  that  vast,  fluctuating  mass  of  spiritual 
life  whence  all  thought  and  all  feeling  arise,  and  with- 


44  EMERSON  AS   A   TEACHER 

out  which  the  most  creative  minds  could  not  create, 
or,  could  they  create,  would  be  creative  to  no  purpose. 

This  action  and  reaction,  give  and  take,  between 
reader  and  writer  is  worthy  of  attention  quite  apart 
from  the  value  of  the  ideas  which  it  may  have  brought 
forth.  It  would  afford  another  demonstration  of  the 
relativeness  of  all  judgment,  of  the  incompleteness  of 
all  definite  views,  and  it  would  constitute  an  additional 
lesson,  very  wholesome  for  our  conceit  and  impatience, 
on  the  poverty  and  faultiness  of  each  individual's 
contribution  to  truth,  as  compared  with  the  excellence 
of  the  unindividual  mass  of  thought  made  up  of  such 
contributions. 

As  regards  Emerson,  I  am  aware  of  his  exceptional 
influence  in  maturing  my  thought.  And  it  is  my 
impression  that  in  return  for  the  partial  change  he  has 
thus  effected — since  only  partial  changes  are  valuable, 
implying  by  their  partiality  the  presence  of  some 
original  tendencies — I  have  been  able  to  alter  some 
of  his  main  ideas  in  a  way  such  as  to  render  them 
more  fruitful  :  clearing  them  of  certain  sterilising 
excrescences,  and  grafting  them  on  to  the  living 
thought  of  our  days.  My  reader,  in  his  turn,  will 
alter  and  prune  and  graft  my  alterations,  or  cast  them 
aside  as  useless,  or  useless  at  least  to  himself. 

But  be  this  as  it  may,  my  notes  will  be  valuable  in 
showing  one  of  the  ways  in  which  reader  and  writer 
unite  to  form  a  something  new.  For  it  will  be  visible 
in  them  that  Emerson  helped  me  first  by  arousing 
considerable  antagonism,  and  that  the  reaction  against 
his  antagonistic  peculiarities  so  helped  to  clear  my 
own  ideas,  that  I  grew  eventually  able  to  approach  him 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  45 

with  impartiality,  to  separate  deliberately  what  dis- 
figured him  in  my  eyes  ;  and,  having  put  aside  these 
disfiguring  portions,  to  enter  his  presence  in  a  mood 
worthy  of  making  me  receive  the  inestimable  gifts  of 
his  soul. 


II 


Emerson,  like  Ruskin,  like  Tolstoi,  belongs  to  the 
category,  once  numerous,  now  daily  diminishing  in 
number,  of  mystics  and  symbolists.  Their  method 
is  innate  in  him,  if  we  may  call  method  that  which 
implies  the  absence  rather  than  the  presence  of 
intellectual  discipline  :  truth  is  perceived  by  flashes, 
in  luminous  points  amid  the  darkness,  without  any 
attempt  to  work  it  out,  to  shed  the  light  of  one  opinion 
upon  the  neighbouring  opinion,  to  obtain  a  continuity 
of  solid,  illuminated  ground. 

He  openly  deprecates  any  attempts  at  consecutiveness, 
he  warns  mankind  against  wanting  to  do  that  which 
cannot  be  done  without  the  wanting,  against  wishing  to 
be  or  to  have  what  they  are  not  or  have  not  already. 
He  is  the  apostle  of  spontaneity  ;  in  his  consuming 
passion  for  reality  he  confounds  the  deliberate  with  the 
artificial,  and  the  artificial  with  the  futile.  The  benefit 
of  Emerson's  advice  on  this  head  depends  on  the 
recognition  that  there  are  some  things  we  can  never  do, 
some  things  we  can  never  have  or  be — namely,  all 
those  of  whose  nature  there  is  not  in  ourselves  already 
a  germ,  a  possibility.  The  danger  of  Emerson's  advice 
consists  in  making  us  believe  that  the  _§ctual  is  the 
£0tential,  that  what  we  are  not  we  cannot  become,  that 


46  EMERSON  AS  A  TEACHER 

what  we  have  not  yet  got  we  may  never  obtain. 
There  will  be  a  distinct  gain  in  spontaneity,  which 
spontaneity  means  success,  and  a  diminution  of  the 
kind  of  effort  which  means  only  failure,  despair,  or, 
worst  of  all,  the  wasting,  the  spoiling  of  what  is 
valuable.  There  will  be  a  much  smaller  number  of 
shams,  and  a  greater  proportion  of  satisfactory 
products  ;  which  means  an  increase  of  happiness  and 
what  conduces  thereto.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
will  be  a  waste  of  potentialities,  of  the  things  that  might 
have  been  ;  and  therewith  a  great  loss  in  completeness, 
thoroughness,  balance,  and  in  all  things  intellectual, 
of  lucidity  and  efficacy  for  application  to  practice. 
The  world  will  not  be  in  thorough  working  order, 
since  working  order  implies  co-ordination,  co-operation, 
compromise.  Things  will  be  comparatively  spasmodic, 
and,  in  a  measure,  sterile.  This  absence  of  lucidity, 
this  sporadic,  sterile  tendency,  is  visible  in  Emerson 
himself;  it  is  the  drawback  of  his  doctrine,  of  his  practice 
of  spontaneity. 

Yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  is  not  better  thus — 
better  that  the  exaggerations  and  shortcomings  should 
be  corrected  by  Emerson's  readers  than  forestalled  by 
Emerson  himself.  It  is  possible  that  with  men  of  this 
mystic-symbolical  temper  the  greater  lucidity  and 
practical  applicability  (since  practice  is  based  on  reality, 
and  reality  can  be  attained  only  by  being  lucid)  might 
fail  to  compensate  for  the  diminution  in  suggestiveness 
and  directness.  The  prophetically  enounced  thought 
works  its  way  deeper,  perhaps,  into  the  mind  of  the 
hearer,  when  it  is  such  as  does  not  graze  off  the  surface. 
It  sets  the  mind  a-thinking  (when  itself  thinkable) 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  47 

more  than  the  carefully  argued  thesis.  So  it  is  well 
worth  while  to  let  the  prophet  babble  occasional 
nonsense,  talk,  like  the  earliest  Christians  and  the 
Irvingites,  in  gibberish  tongues,  for  the  sake  of  the 
great  words  of  inspiration  which  drop,  ever  and  anon, 
from  his  superhuman  lips. 

But  connection  in  our  ideas,  the  quality  of  being 
thought  out,  is  valuable  for  more  than  itself.  The 
act  of  bringing  our  ideas  into  mutual  dependence 
shows  us  also  which  of  them  are  worthless  :  the  union 
of  a  fallacy  with  a  truth,  even  if  it  produce  no 
immediate  jar,  can  produce  but  a  vicious  consequence. 
We  begin  to  doubt  of  our  premiss  on  seeing  its  unten- 
able conclusions  or  side-issues.  Here,  then,  comes 
in  the  danger  of  the  intellectual  methods  of  Emerson, 
of  all  prophetic,  clairvoyant,  as  distinguished  from 
prosaically  logical,  thinkers.  These  men  can  throw  out 
a  falsehood  or  mere  faulty  approximation  to  truth, 
without  being  warned  of  what  they  are  doing.  Nay, 
worse,  they  can  hit  upon  a  truth  without  that  truth 
destroying  its  corresponding  error.  In  this  system 
(or  absence  thereof)  of  isolating  ideas,  everything  is 
safe — the  good  and  the  bad  can  rest  at  peace  ;  the 
good  does  not  inconvenience  the  bad,  nor  the  bad 
inconvenience  the  good.  The  thinker  is  never  called 
upon  to  make  a  choice  among  his  thoughts,  he  may 
keep  them  all.  Hence  it  is  that  these  clairvoyant 
thinkers  give  us  so  much  of  truth  swimming  in  so 
much  of  falsehood,  or  vice  versa.  Hence,  worst  of 
all,  that  they  will  be  so  serenely  unconscious  of  the 
practical  dangers  of  their  teachings.  The  metaphysical 
Schoolmen  of  the  Middle  Ages  kept  up  the  standard 


48  EMERSON   AS  A  TEACHER 

of  thinking  and  living  ;  while  the  mystics,  their 
superiors  in  mind  and  in  feeling,  very  frequently 
debased  it  exceedingly. 

And,  moreover,  this  resting  satisfied  with  one's 
spontaneous  intentions,  as  distinguished  from  all 
attempts  to  connect  and  correct  them,  this  habit  of 
never  comparing  one's  conceptions  of  things  with  each 
other  must  result  in  a  virtual  refusal  to  examine  either 
facts  or  other  men's  views.  No  sense  of  intellectual 
responsibility  can  be  generated  by  modes  of  thought  so 
casual  and  disconnected.  The  thinker  keeps  his  ideas 
apart,  so  they  never  clash  ;  he  keeps  them  separate  also 
from  their  own  consequences,  from  the  thought  of 
others,  from  the  inconvenient  testimony  of  reality.  He 
clears  all  around  him  ;  and  soon  comes  to  be  the  only 
mind,  the  only  thought  in  the  universe  :  the  universe 
becomes  the  image  of  his  views  of  it ;  and  all  save  the 
intellect  ceases  to  exist. 

It  is  most  curious  to  observe  how  Emerson,  whose 
exquisite  moral  and  aesthetic  sensibility  is  revealed  in  a 
thousand  fragmentary  utterances,  uproots  all  human 
sympathies  and  preferences  in  laying  out  his  stony 
garden  of  the  intellect,  but  leaves  them  everywhere 
about,  to  bloom  delightfully — little  unnoticed  heaps  or 
earth's  weeds  in  those  fine  concentric  paths  and  beds 
of  intellectual  spar  and  gravel.  Thus,  in  the  famous 
essay  on  "  Friendship,"  that  most  extraordinary 
revelation  of  a  passionate  personality,  he  affects  to 
consider  the  friend  as  a  mere  intellectual  excitement 
(all  is  over,  he  tells  us,  once  curiosity  is  satisfied)  ;  and 
even  in  placing  his  austere  bounds  to  such  intellectual 
voluptuousness,  he  speaks  only  of  his  own  self-respect, 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  49 

his  own  spiritual  temperance,  and  the  results  of  indul- 
gence, or  refraining  upon  his  own  soul,  with  never 
a  reference  to  the  feelings,  the  poor  soft  heart  of  the 
other  party.  Learn  to  check  your  fancies  in  friend- 
ship, to  refrain  from  your  friend,  to  do  without ;  learn 
to  expect  no  reciprocity.  Why  ?  Lest  in  your  hurry 
you  may  engage  another's  permanent  affection  where 
you  cannot  give  your  own  ? — lest  in  your  habit  of 
constant  spiritual  union  you  become  selfish,  exacting, 
or,  in  your  desire  for  reciprocation,  you  grow  unable 
to  give  save  where  you  receive  ?  For  not  one  of  these 
reasons.  No ;  merely  because  of  the  risk  to  your 
intellectual  independence,  your  intellectual  integrity 
and  security.  One  would  think,  were  it  not  for  the 
evidence  of  a  hundred  scattered  utterances  of  most 
delicate  lovingkindness,  that  Emerson  was  a  fierce  intel- 
lectual egoist  like  Abelard,  writing  just  such  letters  to 
Heloise,  answering  her  prayer  for  one  gentle  word 
with  chapters  of  theology,  in  the  suppressed  savageness 
of  a  mediaeval  ascetic,  who  sees  with  disgust  something 
that  has  once  inflamed  his  senses  but  never  touched 
his  heart. 

And  similarly  he  mentions  pain,  not  as  a  horror 
whose  existence  all  around  we  must  for  ever  struggle 
against — a  horror  the  thought  of  which,  as  existing 
in  others,  is  almost  as  bad  as  its  reality  in  ourselves — 
but  as  a  possible  factor  in  producing  the  man  of  pure 
intellect — the  jus t um  et  tenacem  propositi  virum. 

For  Emerson  is  perpetually  repeating  that  all  life 
is  in  the  intellect — nay,  all  reality.  Hence  a  possibility 
of  interest  only  in  cause  and  effect — in  the  why  things 
^  not  the  how  things  should  be.  Hence  all  matters 

4 


50  EMERSON   AS   A  TEACHER 

being  referable  only  to  Intellect,  Intellect — or  rather, 
an  intellect  corresponding  to  his  own — is  evidently 
God.  And  hence  a  perpetual  worship,  sometimes 
slightly  savouring  of  Moloch's,  of  a  Godhead  which, 
in  its  apparent  indifference  to  evil  and  suffering,  is 
indeed  but  the  mist-magnified  shadow  of  Emerson's 
own  Olympian  mind. 

All  things,  therefore,  are  the  symbol  of  Divinity,  the 
forms  in  which  the  Creative  force  chooses,  Proteus-like, 
to  mask.  And  for  this  reason  nature,  all  that  is  and 
can  be,  is  noble. 

But  Emerson  is  meanwhile  the  sport  of  a  delusion  : 
he  conceives  that  what  is  taking  place  within  himself  is 
happening  also  without.  He  is  watching  his  own 
mind,  shadowed  on  the  outer  world,  passing  from 
object  to  object ;  and  he  fancies  that  this  vague  and 
magnified  himself  must  be  God.  Thus  the  divinity— 
for  Emerson  the  divinity  passing  into  and  through  all 
things — is  not  the  power  by  virtue  of  which  things  are, 
but  in  reality  the  power  by  virtue  of  which  he  per- 
ceives their  existence.  For  Emerson,  though  often 
insisting  on  the  part  played  by  the  perceiving  mind  in 
all  matters  of  perception,  refuses  to  consider  that  in  the 
same  way  as  the  structure  of  the  eye,  which  makes  a 
straight  stick  seem  crooked  in  the  water,  so  also  the 
quality  and  condition  of  the  mind  which  perceives 
nature,  is  a  fact  inside  nature,  and  not  outside  it.  If 
Emerson  had  any  habits  of  systematic  thought,  he 
could  not  avoid  taking  notice  of  this  fact ;  he  would 
be  obliged,  once  having  suspected  their  nature,  to 
examine  methodically  his  own  mental  operations.  But 
being  unhampered  by  any  system,  he  can  afford  to  look 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  51 

away  from  any  fact  which  might  disturb  him  ;  and  so, 
at  the  convenient  moment,  when  it  would  have  become 
clear  that  thought  cannot — any  more  than  the  senses  can 
— handle  absolute  reality,  he  looks  away  from  himself, 
and  looks  in  the  direction  of  what  he  calls  God.  Here, 
by  no  metaphysical  sleight  of  hand,  but  by  merely 
dropping  the  subject  and  picking  it  up  elsewhere,  he 
has  momentarily  got  rid  of  the  identity  between  the 
universal  mind  and  his  own.  This  intellect,  self-created 
and  all-creating,  is  now  no  longer  the  mind  of  Emer- 
son, moulding  matter  into  so  many  disguises  for  itself  : 
it  is  the  mind  of  the  world.  And  who  could  deny  that 
the  mind  of  the  world,  in  so  far  as  mind  of  the 
world,  might  sport  with  matter,  or  call  it  up  as 
a  mere  phantom  out  of  nothingness  ?  The  purely 
intellectual  man,  impatient  of  all  that  is  not  intel- 
lect, revolting  from  the  thought  that  anything  save 
intellect  can  have  reality,  does  thus  attribute  his  own 
temper  to  the  Godhead — the  Godhead  with  whom  he 
fancies  that,  in  following  any  chain  of  cause  and  effect, 
he  must  be  united  and  identified. 

Therefore  [attempting  to  systematise  what  Emerson 
has  thrown  out  in  separate  statements]  the  divinity, 
inasmuch  as  the  mere  magnified  reflexion  of  the  indi- 
vidual intellect,  is  necessarily  what  that  individual 
interest  happens  to  be  :  that  which  makes  or  perceives 
all  cause  and  effect.  And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that 
cause  and  effect,  being  made  by  the  mind  identical  with 
God,  and  hence  by  God  Himself,  become  the  Godlike  ; 
and  the  Godlike,  Emerson  has  been  accustomed  to 
think,  is  the  same  as  the  holy,  the  virtuous.  In  short, 
all  that  is  is  right,  not  as  Pope  imagined,  because  it  was 


52  EMERSON    AS   A   TEACHER 

necessarily  made  to  be  right,  but  merely  because  to  be 
right  is  the  same  as  to  be,  because  something  else  has  been 
before  and  conditioned  it.  "  It  is  dislocation  and 
detachment  from  the  life  of  God,"  we  read  in  the  Essay 
on  the  poet,  "  that  makes  things  ugly  ;  and  the  poet 
who  reattaches  things  to  nature  and  the  whole — re- 
attaching  even  artificial  things  and  revelations  of  nature 
to  nature  by  a  deeper  insight — disposes  very  easily  of 
disagreeable  facts."  This,  extended  into  less  pithy 
language,  means  merely  that  all  is  right  so  long  as  it  is 
understood ;  and  that  the  scientific  thinker,  whom 
Emerson  misnames  Poet,  being  able  to  demonstrate 
that  even  such  things  as  most  shock  our  constitution 
are  yet  the  inevitable  results  of  certain  other  things,  can 
give  us  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  cause  and  effect  and 
thereby  set  our  minds  at  rest  about  such  "  disagreeable 
facts"  as  it  foolishly  feels  annoyed  at.  Whatever  is, 
being  cause  and  effect,  is  an  emanation  of  the  divinity, 
who  is  also  cause  and  effect.  And,  as  Emerson  has 
been  brought  up  to  connect  morality  with  what  other 
men  call  God  (meaning  thereby  any  of  a  variety  of 
things,  but  not  cause  and  effect),  Emerson  perceives 
that  cause  and  effect  must  be  moral.  "  Since  every- 
thing in  nature,"  he  says,  "  answers  to  a  moral  power, 
if  any  phenomenon  remains  brute  and  dark,  it  is 
because  the  corresponding  faculty  in  the  observer  is 
not  yet  active  " — that  is  to  say  that  the  "  brute  and 
dark  "  phenomenon  is  not  yet  disposed  of  as  cause  and 
effect.  Thus  to  the  connecting,  reasoning  mind,  cause 
and  effect  having  become  divine,  came  actually  to  mean 
morality.  The  evil  fact  is  comfortably  settled  once  we 
have  recognised  its  origin,  and  pain  and  death,  disease 


OF  LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES     53 

and  degradation,  may  link  hands  with  whatever  is  fair 
and  noble  here  below,  and  revolve  mystically  round 
the  Divinity  and  the  divine  human  being  in  a  rhythm 
of  causation  and  logic,  making  soul-music  of  is  and 
was  ! 

Nay,  further — for  it  is  easier  sometimes  for  the 
intellect  to  endure  evil  than  that  which,  being  the 
reverse  of  intellect,  is  more  antagonistic  to  it — 
Emerson  formulates  what  has  been  blunderingly  put 
into  practice  by  Whitman,  and  condenses  into  a  few 
mystical  words  what  Whitman  extends  into  grotesque 
rhapsodies  of  mixed  beauty  and  dirt.  "  All  the  facts 
of  the  animal  economy,"  says  Emerson,  "  sex,  nutri- 
ment, gestation,  birth,  growth,  are  symbols  of  the 
passage  of  the  world  into  the  soul  of  man." 

But  the  soul  of  man,  not  being,  as  Emerson  takes 
for  granted,  exclusively  devoted  to  logic,  will  not 
receive  into  itself  with  equanimity  some  of  the  sym- 
bolical items.  The  soul  of  man  protests  against  the 
contact  of  foulness  and  baseness,  injustice  and  pain, 
however  much  legitimated  by  logic.  The  soul  will 
not  be  satisfied  with  a  divinity  that  governs  mere 
cause  and  effect — it  requires  a  moral,  an  aesthetic 
rule. 

In  this  fashion  does  the  most  cunning  reader  of  the 
mind's  strange  palimpsest  forget  for  the  time  being 
some  of  the  mind's  most  striking  rubrics.  This 
delicate  expert  in  exquisite  nature  leaves  out  of  his 
reckoning  some  of  nature's  most  essential  qualities.  He 
overlooks  in  his  main  philosophy  what  is  the  burden 
of  all  his  detail  teaching — namely,  that  we  require  for 
our  spiritual  satisfaction  much  more  than  the  mere 


54  EMERSON   AS   A   TEACHER 

apprehension  of  cause  and  effect  ;  that,  besides  the 
wish  to  understand  why  things  are,  there  is  in  us  the 
more  imperious  want  to  make  things  as  they  should  be. 
He  puts  aside  what  elsewhere  he  perpetually  postulates, 
that,  even  as  we  have  physical  senses  which  are  dis- 
gusted by  certain  tastes  and  smells,  despite  all  explana- 
tions of  their  chemical  reasons,  so  likewise  we  have 
spiritual  instincts  which,  despite  all  possible  explanations 
of  how  and  why,  will  always  be  revolted  by  whatever 
is  unjust,  cruel,  ugly,  or  gross.  There  is  in  us  the 
logical  faculty  which  reduces  all  things  to  cause  and 
effect,  making  them  all  equally  important  or  unim- 
portant, according  as  the  mind  which  perceives  is  keen 
or  languid.  But  there  are  also  the  aesthetic  and  moral 
faculties  which  are  essentially  selecting,  preferring,  and 
which  arrange  all  things  in  a  long  scale  whose  bottom 
means  abhorrence  or  contempt,  and  whose  top  the 
fervidest  love  and  admiration.  These  and  these  only 
are  qualifying  activities  ;  the  mere  logical  intellect  can 
only  recognise  and  connect,  it  cannot  judge.  It  is  not, 
thanks  to  the  intellect,  that  anything,  that  "  sex, 
gestation,  nutriment,"  &c.,  can  be  made  high  or  low 
according  as  it  is,  or  is  not,  viewed  in  connection  with 
the  scheme  of  creation  ;  since  the  intellect  knows 
neither  high  nor  low.  If  a  subject  can  seem  now  gross 
and  now  pure,  now  trivial  and  now  dignified,  it  is 
because  our  qualifying  functions,  moral  or  aesthetic, 
recognise  the  superior  desirableness  or  rareness  of  the 
intellectual  perception  as  distinguished  from  the  bodily 
one ;  because  they  have  decided  that  if  there  is 
enough  and  too  much  of  the  contemplation  of  some 
matters  by  the  brute,  there  is  not  enough  of  this 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  55 

contemplation  by  the  scientific  man  or  the  moralist. 
And  who  tells  us  that  the  man  of  science  or  the 
moralist  is  nobler  than  the  brute  ?  Not  the  instinct  of 
mere  causal  relation,  but  the  instinct  which  says :  "  I 
want  more  of  this,  less  of  that "  ;  the  instinct  which 
brings  things  into  relation,  not  with  what  Emerson 
worships  as  God,  but  with  what  Emerson  is  for  ever 
overlooking — Man. 

The  fact  is  that  Emerson,  in  his  process  of  forgetting 
everything  that  is  not  mind,  has  forgotten  human 
nature  ;  in  his  supposed  union  with  God  he  has  left 
Man  in  the  lurch.  His  grave  optimism  is  founded  on 
a  disregard  for  man's  existence  ;  when  he  is  talking 
about  man,  with  the  marvellous  intuition  so  oddly  at 
variance  with  his  theoretic  onesidedness,  he  is  often 
pessimistic  enough. 

Having  perceived  that  all  things  proceed  with  logical 
correctness,  and  having  identified  his  own  perception 
of  cause  and  effect  with  the  creative  act,  Emerson  has 
judged  that  all  that  is,  is  right.  Thus  in  the  uni- 
verse where  God  and  Emerson — strange  mystic  dual- 
ism ! — sit  alone,  willing  and  understanding,  under- 
standing and  willing.  But  introduce  into  this  universe 
man,  and  the  aspect  of  matters  changes.  Those  things 
which  affect  Emerson  and  God  as  right — that  is 
to  say,  as  being — affect  man  sometimes  as  agreeable, 
sometimes  as  disagreeable  ;  sometimes  as  beautiful, 
sometimes  as  atrocious.  The  current  of  intelligent 
approbation  between  the  Universal  Mind  and  the 
Mind  of  Emerson  is  interrupted  now  and  then 
by  a  sudden  movement  of  this  new  agent,  man, 
standing,  as  it  were,  half-way — movements  meaning 


56  EMERSON   AS  A   TEACHER 

joy,  admiration,  pain,  horror,  despair.  Why  so  ? 
Simply  because  this  new  agent,  man,  perceives  things 
according  to  a  new  standard,  the  standard  of  his  own 
preservation  and  happiness.  Right  and  wrong  mean 
no  longer  intelligible  and  unintelligible  ;  they  mean 
that  which  makes  for  man's  interests  or  against  them. 
An  aesthetic  and  ethical  standard  evolves,  by  which  it 
is  quite  impossible  to  continue  considering  all  things  as 
equal,  merely  because  they  are  equally  willed  by  God  ; 
that  is  to  say,  speaking  objectively  and  without  mystical 
metaphor,  because  they  can  be  equally  understood  by 
Emerson.  Instead  of  the  cause,  man  asks  after  the 
effect ;  and  that  things  are  and  must  be  merely  results, 
in  certain  cases,  in  rendering  things  more  odious  in  his 
eyes.  Hence,  with  the  appearance  of  man,  the  scheme 
of  pure  optimism  falls  to  the  ground  ;  and  Emerson, 
systematic  in  one  matter,  and  obeying  an  unerring 
instinct,  does  all  he  can  to  keep  man  out  of  the  way  ; 
Man,  be  it  understood,  in  so  far  as  he  is  more  than  a 
mere  fragment  of  the  Universal  Mind,  a  mere  molecule 
of  causal  perception.  We  hear,  therefore,  of  pain  and 
sorrow  only  as  we  might  hear  of  hot  or  cold  ;  and  of 
justice  and  injustice  rather  as  intellectual  questions — 
virtually  openness,  or  the  reverse,  to  conviction. 
Attempts  at  reform — that  is  to  say,  at  diminishing  or 
equalising  the  human  burden  of  woes — are  treated  as 
intellectual  experiments,  movements  interesting  in 
their  symmetrical  equilibrium  with  other  movements. 
All  is  quite  regular  and  lucid,  hence  right  and 
noble  ;  and  thus  a  great  lid  of  intellectual  optimism 
descends  to  silence  the  unrest  and  dissatisfaction 
of  man. 


OF   LATTER-DAY   TENDENCIES  57 


III 


The  Nemesis  comes.  Its  name  is  Unreality,  and  this 
should  have  been  the  title,  and  not  Experience,  of 
Emerson's  most  wonderful  essay.  The  punishment,  or 
rather  (since  I  do  not,  like  Emerson,  believe  in  a 
neatly  adjusting  Providence)  the  inevitable  result  of 
reducing  all  things  to  their  merely  intellectual  aspect, 
is  that,  ever  and  anon,  the  man  who  has  so  reduced 
them  will  awake  to  the  sense  of  reduction  to  nothing- 
ness. For  intellectual  relations  exist  only  in  our 
thought.  This  is  merely  a  mode  of  grouping,  which 
we  apply  to  them  without  affecting  their  actual  exist- 
ence ;  and  hence  it  is  that  the  man  who  shall  have 
viewed  things  merely  in  such  relations  must,  sooner  or 
later,  feel  the  lack  of  reality.  For  Emerson,  when 
Emerson  dogmatises,  the  individual  is  nothing,  the 
type  everything  ;  and  similarly,  the  separate,  sensible 
moment,  yesterday,  to-morrow,  to-day,  is  nothing,  and 
the  balance  struck  between  them  is  the  important. 
Thus  optimism  is  saved  ;  injustice  and  pain  are  lost 
to  sight  in  a  disproportionate  abstraction.  But  reality 
recoups  itself;  for  in  reality  there  happens  to  exist 
only  the  individual,  the  moment  existing  independent 
and  outside  ourselves.  And  so,  in  the  intervals  of 
speculation,  when  the  man  re-becomes  a  man  and 
compares  his  emotions  with  those  of  his  neighbours, 
Emerson  discovers  that  in  his  search  for  reality  in 
thought  he  has  lost  it  in  fact.  A  passage  in  that  essay 
on  Experience  reads  curiously  like  the  confession  of 
some  great  neoplatonician  thaumaturge  returning  to 


58  EMERSON   AS  A  TEACHER 

earth  after  making  himself  an  abstract  creature,  and 
finding  that  all  things  elude  his  clutch  : 

"  What  opium  is  instilled  into  all  disaster !  It 
shows  formidable  as  we  approach  it,  but  there  is  at 
last  no  rough  and  rasping  friction,  but  the  most 
slippery,  sliding  surfaces.  We  fall  soft  on  a  thought. 
.  .  .  There  are  moods  in  which  we  court  suffering, 
in  the  hope  that  there,  at  least,  we  shall  find  reality, 
strange  peaks  and  edges  of  truth.  But  it  turns  out 
to  be  scene-painting  and  counterfeit.  The  only  thing 
grief  has  taught  me  is  to  know  how  shallow  it  is. 
That,  like  all  the  rest,  plays  about  the  surface,  and 
never  introduces  me  into  the  reality,  for  contact  with 
which  we  would  even  pay  the  costly  price  of  sons 
and  lovers." 

Such  a  sense  of  unreality  must  come  to  all  of  us  at 
certain  times  of  our  spiritual  life,  particularly  during 
the  years  when  we  slowly  replace  with  the  experience 
of  ourselves  the  borrowed  or  ready-made  notions  of 
life  which  had  to  do  duty  in  our  >  youth.  But  it  is 
a  phase  ;  and  in  learning  that  all  things  are  evanescent, 
a  healthy  human  being  learns  also  that  this  condition 
of  soul  is  the  most  evanescent  itself :  a  state  of  trance 
from  which  the  least  rough  shock  or  warm  breath  will 
rouse  us.  But  Emerson  would  have  us  think  that  this 
condition  of  semi-paralysis  in  all  save  the  logical  faculty 
is  the  normal  and  permanent  matter  ;  probably  because 
he  is  taking  for  granted  the  possibility  of  extirpating 
from  our  natures  everything  besides  this  merely  logical 
perception.  It  is  grotesque,  and  in  a  measure  pathetic, 
to  read  after  this  Emerson's  denunciation  of  the  fatalism 
involved  in  a  materialistic  explanation  of  the  mind's 


OF   LATTER-DAY   TENDENCIES  59 

peculiarities — "  given  such  an  embryo,  such  a  history 
must  follow.  On  this  platform  one  lives  in  a  sty  of 
sensualism  and  would  soon  come  to  suicide"  Yet  what 
suicide  could  be  compared  to  the  courting  of  pain 
and  loss  of  the  beloved  for  the  sake  of  the  rough  and 
rasping  friction  of  reality  ?  And  in  another  passage 
we  are  led  to  question  whether,  as  in  the  case  of 
Quietism,  the  transcendental  platform  might  not 
easily  be  transformed  into  a  sty  of  sensualism  as  bad  as 
any  which  Emerson  could  attribute  to  materialistic 
influence.  "  Saints  are  sad,  because  they  behold  sin 
(even  when  they  speculate)  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  conscience,  and  not  of  the  intellect — a  con- 
fusion of  thought.  Sin,  seen  from  the  thought,  is  a 
diminution  or  loss  ;  seen  from  the  conscience  or  will, 
it  is  pravity  or  bad.  The  intellect  names  it  shade,  absence 
of  light,  and  no  essence.  The  conscience  must  feel  it  as 
essence,  essential  evil.  .  .  ."  For  whence  should  come 
conscience,  this  odd  Puritan  interloper,  in  a  world 
which  is  full,  every  nook  and  cranny,  of  the  universal 
creative  essence,  of  the  Supreme  Cause  and  Effect, 
knowing  neither  good  nor  evil — in  a  world  full  of 
what  Emerson  calls  God,  and  void,  utterly  void,  of  the 
sentient  and  suffering  individual,  concrete  man  ?  But 
Emerson  is,  fortunately,  no  real  systematic  thinker, 
and  is,  essentially,  a  Puritan,  full  of  the  sound  morality 
of  Mosaic  law,  and  morality  formulating  as  God's  will 
the  practical  interests  of  man.  So  we  hear  no  more 
about  the  reasons  which  allow  philosophers  to  differ 
from  saints  in  not  looking  sadly  at  evil.  And,  on  the 
contrary,  among  all  the  qualities  metamorphosed  into 
essences,  and  all  the  adjectives  transfigured  and  enthroned 


60  EMERSON   AS   A   TEACHER 

as  metaphysical  entities,  each  with  its  crown  of  stars 
or  of  city  walls,  its  attributes  in  hand  and  under  foot 
— we  find,  foremost  truthfulness,  chastity  and  justice. 
Nay,  by  one  of  those  bold  but  adorable  contradictions 
which  save  the  soul  of  transcendentalists  and  mystics 
from  the  hell  of  indifference — we  are  especially  informed, 
in  the  curious  essay  called  the  Over  Souly  that  the  soul 
of  man,  that  inlet  of  the  universal  mind,  is  filled  with 
the  tide  of  the  universe's  divine  life  more  particularly 
when  it  perceives  justice  or  conceives  heroism. 

This  mysticism,  this  determination  to  reduce  all 
things  to  intellect,  this  violent  clutching  at  the  cause 
behind  phenomena,  gives  Emerson,  like  Ruskin,  a 
certain  mediaeval  character,  not  usually  to  be  met 
nowadays,  save  among  theological  writers  :  he  is 
related  to  the  Abbot  Joachim,  to  Abelard,  to  the 
compilers  of  herbals  and  bestiaries  ;  he  has  a  quaint 
look,  quaint  and  delightful,  of  being  a  belated  brother 
of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  or  Burton  of  the  Anatomy. 
Montaigne  (the  man  he  so  ardently  admires)  might 
as  well  never  have  existed  for  him ;  and  the  other 
masters  of  inductive  thought — Locke,  Voltaire,  Hume, 
the  eighteenth  century  with  its  strong  level  vision,  its 
materialisation  of  Nature,  its  enthroning  of  man — 
have  passed  without  affecting  him.  Modern  science  he 
distinctly  turns  away  from  ;  he  has  a  hankering  after 
visionaries  and  allegorical  expounders,  even  the 
trashiest.  The  names  of  Jacob  Boehm  and  of 
Swedenborg  are  perpetually  returning  to  him ;  he 
believes  Jesus  to  have  been  a  mortal  man,  but  he  might 
easily  grant  some  transcendant  quality  to  Apollonius  of 
Tyana.  He  tends  to  find  a  symbol  in  everything,  a 


OF  LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  61 

mysterious  "  Open,  sesame  !  "  He  cannot  be  satisfied 
with  a  thing  meaning  only  its  poor  self,  serving  its 
obvious  purpose.  Every  analogy  is  to  him  an  actual 
causal  connection,  every  metaphor  which  his  fancy 
perceives  a  sort  of  sign-manual  of  God.  He  has,  to 
the  highest  degree,  the  symbolic  superstition.  For 
him  the  world  exists  by  virtue  of  certain  formulas, 
which  are  not  so  much  shorthand  generalisations  of 
man  as  actual  creative  spells  of  God  :  system,  dualism, 
the  principle  of  opposites  and  compensation,  and  sex. 
There  must  be  a  mysterious  equilibrium  everywhere — 
an  evil  for  every  good,  a  good  for  every  evil,  an 
answer  for  every  question,  a  satisfaction  for  every 
craving,  a  loss  for  every  gain,  a  bitter  for  every  sweet, 
a  female  for  every  male.  And  do  what  you  will  you 
cannot  alter  things,  since,  by  such  a  mysterious  law,  as 
matter  displaced  on  one  side  must  reappear  on  the 
other,  so  also  the  happiness  given  to  Tom  must  be 
taken  from  Harry.  That  the  nature  of  one  thing  or 
case  being  different  from  that  of  another  there  will 
be  a  corresponding  difference  of  rule  and  action,  never 
occurs  to  Emerson.  He  strips  all  things  into  a  sort  of 
unqualified,  non-existent  nakedness,  and  then  calls  it 
unity  and  identity. 

And  yet,  despite  all  this,  Emerson  remains  one  of 
the  thinkers  who  can  do  most  for  us  moderns ;  whose 
teachings,  if  put  into  practice,  could  carry  us  through 
the  greatest  number  of  temptations  and  dangers.  It 
is  with  Emerson's  writings  as  with  the  sacred  books 
of  ancient  times  :  we  must  separate  what  is  due  to 
imperfect  knowledge,  to  superstitious  habits  of  mind, 
and  consequently  mischievous,  or  worthless  and  deci- 


62  EMERSON   AS   A   TEACHER 

duous,  from  that  which  is  due  to  some  great  intuition 
of  truth,  some  special  energy  of  soul,  such  as  is  given 
to  exceptional  races,  or  moments  or  individuals — im- 
mortal gifts  whose  usefulness  will  never  suffer  a  change. 
And,  as  we  find  in  all  such  writings,  bibles  of  all 
nations,  sacred  and  profane,  so  also  in  Emerson  this 
worthless,  changing,  deciduous  part  has  received  its 
excessive  importance  from  the  very  vital  and  immortal 
part  which  it  has  served  to  deface ;  thus  in  Plato  and 
St.  Paul,  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ ; "  and,  among  the 
prophets  of  to-day,  in  Ruskin  and  Tolstoi. 

The  vital,  vitalising  intuition  in  Emerson  is  a  dual- 
ism, closely  connected  :  the  intuition  of  the  worthless- 
ness  of  unreality  for  our  happiness  and  progress  ;  and 
the  intuition  of  the  supreme  power,  for  our  happiness 
and  progress,  of  that  portion  which  we  call  soul. 
Such  intuitions  are  rarely  new.  Antiquity  knew  these 
of  Emerson,  as  India  knew  those  of  Christ  and  his 
mediaeval  followers  ;  but  they  are  born  afresh,  as  it 
were,  with  new  vigour  and  efficacy,  in  a  new  mind  ; 
and,  at  each  new  incarnation  they  are  obliged,  alas, 
to  assume  the  foolish  costume  and  habits — nay,  the 
very  maladies — which  belong  to  thought  at  the 
moment  of  the  new  birth.  In  the  case  of  Emerson, 
the  intuition  of  the  supreme  value  of  reality,  and  of 
the  soul's  most  marvellous  powers  of  expansion  and 
adaptation,  of  its  unique  capacity  for  embracing  all 
things  in  the  acts  of  comprehension,  imagination, 
and  sympathy  —  these  vital  thoughts  were  defined, 
hampered  and  compressed,  by  a  cheap  transcendental- 
ism :  the  metaphysics  of  Germany  adulterated  by  the 
shoddy  science,  the  cheap  mysticism  of  America.  And 


OF   LATTER-DAY   TENDENCIES  63 

the  divine  strength  of  his  mind  may  seem,  at  first 
sight,  to  have  been  employed  merely  in  carrying  the 
weight,  in  filling  up  the  forms,  of  the  threadbare 
garments  of  Dr.  Faust,  and  the  tinsel  garments  of 
some  Jess  philosophic  wizard.  Let  us  strip  them  off  ; 
and  we  shall  see  the  Titan  beneath. 

We  have  seen  how  Emerson  has  got  himself  a 
pocket  religion  by  making  the  human  soul  consub- 
stantial  and  co-extensive  with  God,  and  the  life  of 
the  soul  identical  with  the  perception  of  cause  and 
effect,  so  that,  while  Jehovah  says,  "  I  Am,"  Emerson 
fulfils  his  spiritual  duties  by  repeating,  in  various  forms 
of  words,  "  Thou  art."  Also,  how,  in  his  dread  of 
materialism  and  hedonism,  he  has  attempted  to  measure 
phenomena  of  sensation,  emotion,  and  aesthetic  per- 
ception by  a  mechanism  for  registering  cause  and  effect 
which  is  as  unfit  to  register  their  quality  as  a  pair  of 
scales  is  unfit  to  measure  the  degree  of  heat,  or  a 
barometer  the  intensity  of  the  colour  blue.  Similarly, 
we  shall  find  that  the  same  spiritualistic  bias  has  led 
Emerson  to  repeat,  very  often,  the  stale  Stoical  sayings 
of  the  self-sufHcingness  of  the  mind,  the  unimportance 
of  circumstance,  the  indifference  to  momentary  pain 
and  pleasure. 

The  soul,  indeed,  can  be  trained  to  considerable 
indifference  :  it  can  be  rendered  obtuse  to  pain  and 
pleasure,  to  impressions  and  affections  ;  religious  as- 
ceticism has  always  boasted,  in  the  words  of  Moliere's 
Orgon  :  "  Et  je  verrais  mourir  frere,  enfans,  mere  et 
femme,  que  je  m'en  soucierais  tout  comme  de  cela  !  " 

But  such  indifference  means,  not  uniting  ourself 
closer  with  Nature  and  the  Infinite,  but  cutting  loose 


64  EMERSON   AS   A  TEACHER 

from  them  on  one  whole  side.  The  human  creature, 
no  longer  enjoying,  no  longer  sympathising,  no  longer 
loving,  would  hold  on  to  the  universe  only  by  his 
reason.  The  wind  would  blow,  trees  rustle,  waters 
murmur,  hills  be  blue  and  fields  green,  and  people 
around  be  beautiful,  brilliant  or  kind,  sorrowing  or 
clinging,  without  his  being  any  the  wiser.  Nay,  the 
wiser,  if  it  be  wisdom  merely  to  know  the  necessities 
and  sequences  of  things  without  knowing  the  things 
themselves ;  but  neither  the  happier  nor  the  more 
conducive  to  others'  happiness.  It  would  be  good 
practice  for  dying,  as,  indeed,  Roman  Stoicism  was  the 
school  where  men  learned  to  escape  from  tyranny  by 
suicide  of  body  and  soul.  Such  Stoicism  is  the  folly 
of  philosophers,  the  cowardice  of  heroes,  the  blasphemy 
of  those  who,  believing  in  gods,  reject  their  good  gifts 
for  fear  of  their  bad  ;  it  is  afraid  of  the  universe,  and 
tries  to  look  at  it,  as  Perseus  at  the  head  of  Medusa, 
only  in  the  reflected  image.  This  excess  of  intel- 
lectualism,  thinking  to  limit  all  wants  to  those  of  the 
logical  intellect,  would  defeat  its  own  end  ;  for  what 
should  the  intellect  contemplate  and  discuss,  if  all 
were  reduced  to  abstractions,  if  things  existed  only 
as  ideas,  if  the  moment,  the  individual,  the  sensation, 
the  emotion,  ceased  to  be  ? 

IV 

Such  dogmas  as  these  cannot  form  the  basis  of 
Emerson's  teachings,  much  as  he  tries  to  deduce  the 
one  from  the  other,  any  more  than  the  dogmas  of 
celestial  caprice  and  barbarity,  of  the  Fall,  the  bloody 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  65 

Atonement  and  eternal  Hell  could  be  the  rational 
foundation  for  the  religion  of  mercy  and  love  of 
Francis  of  Assisi.  There  is,  fortunately  for  the  world, 
a  higher  logic,  guessing  at  the  relations  between 
dogmas  and  facts,  which  works  divine  havoc  in  the 
smaller  logic  connecting  one  theory  with  another  ;  the 
soul  frees  itself  from  the  tyranny  of  lies  by  stealthy 
self-contradiction.  The  logical  consequences  of  Emer- 
son's intellectual  pantheism  would  be  to  deny  (what 
man,  according  to  the  Hebrews,  never  learned  from 
the  great  I  Am)  the  distinction  of  good  and  evil  ;  to 
accept  only  the  bare  fact  of  existence,  of  emanation 
from  the  All-powerful.  Why,  therefore,  preach  heroism 
and  the  search  for  truth  ?  Why  struggle  against 
unreality,  hypocrisy,  appearances  ?  Why  denounce 
the  waste  of  effort,  the  dealing  in  words,  supineness, 
vanity,  and  all  the  tissues  of  wine  and  of  dreams  ? 

In  reality  because,  however  unconsciously  to  himself, 
Emerson  was  judging  them  worthless  by  the  purely 
human  instinct  of  affinity  for  certain  qualities,  and 
repulsion  for  certain  others,  by  the  purely  utilitarian 
intuition  of  what  is  desirable  or  undesirable  for  man 
and  man's  race.  And  because  the  main  energy  of  his 
mind,  his  originality  and  inspiration,  consisted  in  an 
instinctive  craving,  despite  the  mere  intellectual  satis- 
faction in  cause  and  effect,  after  a  life  more  large,  more 
varied,  more  transferable  from  object  to  object,  from 
mind  to  mind  :  a  true  life  of  the  soul,  which  includes 
the  life  of  the  sensations  and  emotions,  which  is  based 
on  realities,  and  which  implies  happiness. 

For  it  is  this  which  renders  Emerson's  writings  so 
efficacious  in  one's  life,  so  charged  with  vital  principle  ; 

5 


66  EMERSON   AS   A   TEACHER 

this  which,  entering  into  our  torpid  thought,  fertilises  it, 
makes  it  expand,  alter,  and  bear  fruit.  No  writer  can 
have  a  greater  influence  in  certain  lives,  yet  no  writer, 
surely,  was  ever  more  chary  of  criticisms  and  rules  of 
conduct,  of  what,  in  most  cases,  makes  the  moralist. 
Indeed  you  might  sometimes  think  he  had  never  lived, 
never  felt,  made  choice,  acted,  nay  existed  among  real 
individuals  (for  all  the  passionate  hints  of  the  chapters 
on  love  and  on  friendship)  but  only  among  such 
abstractions  of  mankind  as  his  own  representative 
men  ;  among  ideals  of  human  beings  not  to  be  touched, 
but  to  be  criticised.  The  human  efficacy  of  Emerson's 
teachings  lies  in  his  constant  insistence  upon  the 
necessity  of  widening  existence  by  increased  contact 
with  reality  on  all  sides,  and  of  such  reality  being 
apprehended  by  the  mind,  the  sympathies,  the  imagina- 
tion, as  well  as  by  the  senses.  For  the  narrowest  life 
is  the  one  into  which  there  enter  the  fewest  ideas  — 
the  animal's,  the  child's,  the  savage's  life  of  the  mere 
sensation,  the  mere  moment  ;  and  the  next  narrowest 
is  the  base  man's  life  of  the  mere  ego,  the  appetites  of 
to-day  projected  into  to-morrow,  the  appetites  of 
others  employed  to  gratify  his  own.  Unselfishness  is 
a  widening  of  ourselves  by  giving  equal  rank  to  the 
pleasures  and  rights  of  others — that  is  to  say,  to  what 
is  after  all  an  intellectual  conception,  an  idea  to  us,  not 
a  thing  we  can  taste  or  touch.  Justice,  mercy,  truth — 
those  great  abstractions  covering  the  greater  happiness 
of  the  greater  number,  and  to  which  nobler  men  and 
women  must  sacrifice  good  for  themselves  and  their 
neighbours — justice,  mercy,  truth,  are  more  than  ever 
intellectual  existences,  transcending  our  sensation  and 


OF   LATTER-DAY    TENDENCIES  67 

experience.  And  the  logical,  the  aesthetic  appreciations 
which  unite  us  to  the  world  beyond  man,  which  add  to 
our  own  the  life  we  understand  in  all  phenomena,  the 
life  which  we  love  in  some  of  them,  are  still  more 
obviously  an  enlarging  of  ourselves  through  the 
enlarging  of  our  mind.  For  the  mind  embraces  all, 
while  the  body  can  hold  but  little.  Hence  a  constant 
regard  for  our  possibilities  from  the  intellectual  stand- 
point, a  constant  preference  of  the  life  of  the  soul,  life 
in  all  times  and  places,  over  the  life,  limited  by  moment 
and  place,  of  the  body  ;  an  insistence  upon  the  life 
which  unites  us  to  all  things  instead  of  enclosing  us 
within  ourselves.  Such  a  view  of  existence  must  be  to 
the  highest  degree  vitalising  and  fruitful.  This  would 
not  be  the  case  were  Emerson  the  mere  ordinary 
intellectual  man,  submitting  to  the  intellect  only  the 
things  which  are  obviously  of  the  intellect,  and  leaving 
to  the  appetites,  to  the  emotions,  to  the  vanities  all  the 
rest.  For  Emerson  gives  unto  Caesar  only  the  copper 
penny,  and  claims  for  God  the  kingdom  of  the  earth. 
Emerson  asks  not  what  the  mind  can  make  of  books, 
art,  and  its  other  notorious  belongings  ;  but  what  the 
mind  can  make  of  life  as  a  whole  :  of  love,  friendship, 
practical  efforts,  political  struggles,  domestic  arrange- 
ments— of  everything.  To  him  the  real  life  is  that  of 
the  soul  :  the  life,  so  to  speak,  at  headquarters,  to 
which  all  other  subordinate  lives  do  but  bring  their 
necessary  tribute  of  well-being,  of  experience,  of 
sensation,  of  facts.  He  knows  that  there  is  in  the 
noblest  creatures  a  sort  of  uppermost  consciousness  to 
which  all  lower  ones  lead  ;  which  is  as  homogeneous  as 
they  are  heterogeneous,  as  persistent  as  they  are  fleet- 


68  EMERSON   AS   A   TEACHER 

ing ;  in  which  our  sensations,  actions,  affections  are 
multiplied  tenfold  by  those  of  other  men,  of  other 
times  and  places  ;  and  where,  in  an  endless  chain  of 
pattern,  everything  is  connected  with  something  else, 
everything  transmuted  into  something  different. 
Therefore  all  the  things  which  constitute  our  ordinary 
daily  consciousness,  Emerson  examines ;  asking  of 
what  use  they  may  be  in  this  great  uppermost  con- 
sciousness or  existence  ;  accepting  and  rejecting  in 
accordance  with  this  standard.  Hence  he  is  charac- 
terised and  takes  rank  of  nobility,  mainly  by  a  constant 
scrutinising,  unflinching  elimination  of  unrealities,  of 
activities  and  habits  which  bring  only  wear  and  tear 
and  produce  neither  truth  nor  good  nor  beauty.  A 
great  part  of  his  philosophy  consists  in  the  separation 
of  futile  efforts  from  fruitful ;  another,  in  showing 
how  much  more  we  may  gain  by  letting  things  act  for 
us  than  by  squirming  our  souls  out  in  unnecessary 
action.  He  teaches  that  it  is  not  by  the  books  which 
we  read,  the  men  whom  we  speak  to,  the  stones  and 
tree-trunks  which  we  pull  about,  that  we  are  increasing 
our  life,  still  less  by  the  money  we  amass  or  the 
complications  we  establish  ;  but  only  by  as  much  of 
the  books  as  we  understand,  of  the  men  as  we  love,  of 
the  talk  as  we  wisely  consider,  of  the  materialities 
we  combine  to  give  us  health,  more  peace,  and  more 
power  of  being  realities.  In  fact,  it  is  only  by  as  much 
as  is  vital  and  fertilised  in  our  life  that  our  life  is 
improved.  This  great  purveyor  of  realities  wherewith 
to  nourish  our  highest  life  is  for  ever  warning  us 
against  the  adulteration  of  things  intellectual  and  moral, 
teaching  us  to  separate  the  stones  from  the  bread,  to 


OF   LATTER-DAY  TENDENCIES  69 

throw  away  the  husks  and  the  rind.  He  is  no  hater  of 
tradition,  even  of  convention  ;  because  he  recognises 
that  both  of  them  may  contain  a  portion  of  life.  But 
once  that  life  has  left  the  tradition  and  convention  he 
has  no  patience  but  sweeps  them  away,  be  they  called 
by  the  solemnest  names  of  virtue  and  honour.  Hence 
his  deep  sympathy,  idealist  and  transcendentalist  as  he 
is,  despiser  of  the  gross  and  lover  of  the  spiritual,  with 
the  terre  a  terre  scepticism  of  Montaigne  ;  for  that  scep- 
ticism is  one  of  the  most  potent  agents  for  the  removal 
of  rubbishy  spurious  fact  and  spurious  thought. 
Hence  his  admiration  also  for  the  coarse  practicality  of 
Napoleon,  because  that  also  means  reality,  real  energy, 
sweeping  away  the  unreal,  the  inert. 

Those  who  should  deliberately  follow  Emerson's 
counsels,  omitting  from  their  lives  not  merely  what 
he  directly  advises  should  be  omitted,  but  also  what 
his  whole  system  logically  leads  us  to  reject,  would  be 
surprised  to  find  how  much  space  they  had  left  them- 
selves, how  much  energy  for  the  real  life,  the  life  of 
enjoyment  and  utility.  For  half  of  our  life  is  spent, 
if  not  in  struggling  with  trash,  with  the  unreality 
others  have  burdened  us  with,  as  education,  so  called, 
religion,  sociabilities,  false  necessities  and  ideals  ;  then 
in  actually  doing  the  unreal  :  reading  books  we  do  not 
understand,  seeing  people  we  do  not  like,  doing  acts 
which  lead  to  nothing,  or  to  the  reverse  of  their  inten- 
tion. All  great  teaching,  of  the  sort  which  is,  so  to 
say,  prophetic  and  sacred,  helps  us  to  a  wider  life  in 
other  men,  other  fields  and  times.  Half  of  it  helps  us 
to  do  so  by  trying  to  understand  and  love  others  ;  the 
other  half,  and  Emerson's  teaching  is  among  it,  by 


70  EMERSON   AS   A  TEACHER 

bidding  us  understand  and  reduce  to  reasonableness 
ourselves.  This  vital  energy  in  Emerson's  teaching  is, 
I  think,  given  free  play  only  if  we  liberate  it  from 
notions  which  belonged  not  to  Emerson's  mind,  but  to 
his  intellectual  surroundings.  His  transcendentalism, 
horrified  at  science  and  despising  utility,  arises,  in 
great  measure,  from  the  old  metaphysical  and  theologi- 
cal habit  of  regarding  the  soul  as  a  ready-made,  separate 
entity,  come,  Heaven  knows  whence,  utterly  unconnected 
with  the  things  among  which  it  alights,  and  struggling 
perpetually  to  be  rid  of  them  and  return  somehow  to 
its  unknown  place  of  origin.  Had  Emerson  suspected, 
as  we  have  reason  to  suspect,  that  the  soul  is  born  of 
the  soil,  its  fibre  the  fibre  of  every  plant  and  animal, 
its  breath  the  breath  of  every  wind,  its  shape  the  space 
left  vacant  by  other  shapes,  he  would  not  have  been 
obliged  to  arrange  a  purely  intellectual  transcendental 
habitation  for  this  supposed  exile  from  another  sphere. 
And  his  intuition  of  a  possible  universal  life  would  have 
been  strengthened,  not  damaged,  by  the  knowledge 
that  our  soul  is  moulded  into  its  form — nay,  takes  its 
very  quality,  from  surrounding  circumstances  ;  and  the 
probability,  therefore,  that  between  the  soul  and  its 
surroundings  there  will  be  a  growing  relation  and 
harmony,  as  of  product  and  producer,  concave  and 
convex. 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 


DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

"  r"T'HE  author  of  the  now  famous  volumes  on 
A  Degeneracy  is  himself  a  Degenerate  "  ;  we  have 
all  of  us  heard,  and  nearly  all  of  us  passed,  that 
obvious  criticism  on  Max  Nordau.  Eccentricity, 
Suspiciousness  of  Evil,  Egotism,  Idles  .F/#£j,Obsession  by 
the  Thought  of  Impurity,  Lack  of  Human  Sympathy, 
Confusion  of  Categories,  Unbridled  Violence  of  Hatred, 
Indiscriminate  Destructiveness  ;  he  has  taught  us  to 
recognise  all  these  as  the  stigmata  of  degeneracy ',  and  we 
have  recognised  them  all  in  himself.  As  a  result,  and 
following  his  own  method  towards  every  contemporary 
writer,  from  Tolstoi  to  Zola,  from  Ruskin  to  Ibsen, 
and  from  Whitman  to  Rossetti,  we  may  be  tempted  to 
destroy  Max  Nordau's  books  as  pestilent  rubbish,  and 
forget  his  theories  as  insane  ravings.  But  it  is  better 
that  Nordau's  absurdities  and  furies  should  serve  rather 
as  a  deterrent  than  an  example  ;  that  our  abhorrence  of 
his  ways  should  teach  the  discrimination  and  justice  of 
which  he  is  incapable  ;  and,  if  we  wish  to  be  more 
reasonable  than  he,  that  we  should  examine  and 
profit  by  what  reasonableness  there  may  be  even  in 
him. 

As  regards  myself,  I  find  that  Nordau's  book  has 
inspired  me  with  a  salutary  terror,  not  merely  of  De- 


73 


74  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

generacy  (though  he  is  right  in  teaching  us  to  be  afraid 
of  that),  but  of  the  deterioration  of  the  soul's  faculties 
and  habits,  which  is  the  inevitable  result  of  all  intellec- 
tual injustice.  And  it  is  because  Nordau  himself  is  so 
striking  an  example  of  such  deterioration,  that  I  am 
anxious  to  discuss  the  chief  facts  and  conclusions  of  his 
book,  and  to  suggest  certain  other  facts  and  conclusions, 
which,  taken  together,  may  make  us  appreciate  the 
dangers  we  all  run,  if  not  of  mental  and  moral  de- 
generacy, at  all  events  of  mental  and  moral  debase- 
ment. 


1 


The  new  school  of  intellectual  and  moral  pathology, 
besides  assigning  a  physiological  reason  to  a  large 
amount  of  moral  and  mental  imperfection,  has  put 
forward  a  hypothesis,  according  to  which  the  immoral 
or  idiotic  person  of  mature  age  and  modern  times  is 
the  equivalent,  through  arrested  growth  or  atavism,  of 
the  child  or  of  the  normal  adult  of  more  barbarous 
periods.  This  hypothesis  is  probably  very  crude  on 
the  biological  plane,  but  it  seems  uncommonly  correct 
and  exceedingly  suggestive  on  the  moral  one.  Spiritual 
imperfection  may  be  due,  as  I  propose  showing,  to 
causes  other  than  bodily ;  and  the  criminal  or  anti-social 
person  need  not  resemble  in  other  points  either  a  child 
or  a  savage.  But  the  pathological  psychologists,  from 
Maudsley  and  Moreau  to  Lombroso  and  Nordau,  have 
done  excellent  service  in  pointing  out  that  criminal 
instincts  and  anti-social  behaviour  are  closely  connected 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  75 

with  disease,  immaturity  or  barbarism ;  and  that,  con- 
trary to  the  picturesque  views  of  decadent  poets  and  of 
the  readers  of  police  reports,  there  is  nothing  either 
refined  or  heroic,  or  in  fact  anything  save  excessively 
vulgar,  in  uncleanness  and  bloodthirstiness.  It  is  very 
good  for  all  of  us,  especially  in  our  salad  days,  to 
learn  that  as  regards  evil,  rarity  does  not  constitute 
distinction  ;  that  perverted  instincts  are  universal 
among  gaol-birds  and  maniacs  ;  that  insensibility 
to  the  feelings  of  others  is  a  frequent  forerunner 
of  imbecility,  and  excessive  egotism  a  common  result 
of  visceral  disturbances.  Such  coincidences,  even 
where  merely  coincidences,  are  due  to  a  great 
practical  truth,  which  the  school  of  moral  patho- 
logy has  put  in  the  clearest  light,  to  wit  :  that  all 
instincts  or  forms  of  instinct  detrimental  to  the  social 
good,  are,  in  a  sense,  deciduous  and  sterile  ;  that  the 
world  is  perfectly  right  in  considering  weakness  of  will, 
unchastity  of  thought  and  word,  egotism  and  vanity  as 
a  contagious  danger  to  the  community  ;  that  religion 
and  philosophy  have  been  clairvoyant  in  announcing 
that  human  liberty  can  be  attained  only  by  controlling 
desire  and  enlarging  sympathy ;  that,  in  short,  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  Earth  will  be  the  Kingdom  off 
the  Spirit. 

This  much  has  been  formulated,  made  clear  through 
analysis  and  example,  by  the  new  science  of  the  soul's 
death  and  disease  ;  the  sober  works  of  Maudsley,  of 
Ribot,  Richet,  and  of  Janet,  the  extravagant  though 
sometimes  luminous  books  of  Lombroso,  particularly 
the  two  volumes  of  Nordau,  are  full  of  invaluable  prac- 
tical suggestiveness.  Unluckily  the  general  usefulness 


76  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

of  the  science  has  been  diminished,  it  seems  to  me,  by 
the  tendency  of  the  more  sober  among  mental  patho- 
logists  to  limit  their  observations  and  theories  to  cases 
of  thorough-paced  madness,  perversity,  imbecility,  or 
criminality  ;  and  the  practical  lessons  have  been  largely 
neutralised  by  the  eccentric  hypothesis  of  Lombroso 
and  Nordau,  who  have  separated  spiritual  degeneracy 
from  spiritual  deterioration,  and  confined  it  to  well- 
defined  categories  of  individuals.  For  Professor 
Lombroso,  as  everyone  is  aware,  has  developed  into  an 
elaborate  system  the  notion  of  some  of  the  earlier 
students  of  mental  pathology,  that  special  abilities  are 
due  to  a  disturbance  of  the  normal  psychic  balance,  and 
are  therefore  accompanied  by  intellectual  or  moral  un- 
soundness  ;  in  other  words  that  talent  is  a  morbid 
production  like  madness  or  criminality,  accompanied 
invariably  by  some  of  their  stigmata,  and  different 
from  either  only  by  the  accident  of  being,  on  the  whole, 
more  useful  than  detrimental  to  the  community.  And 
'  <;  .  Professor  Nordau,  while  explicitly  rejecting  Lombroso's 

X  theory  of  the  affinity  between  talent,  madness,  and 
criminality,  has  yet  put  forward  the  notion,  and  illus- 
y-TN  trated  it  by  endless  example  and  analysis,  that  during 
the  last  forty  years  there  has  been  degeneracy  invariably 
manifested  among  literary,  artistic,  and  philosophic 
workers  ;  while,  during  this  period,  intellectual  and 
moral  health  has  become  the  exclusive  property  of  men 
of  science  and  of  mediocrities. 

These  theories,  whether,  as  with  Lombroso,  they 
accept  the  man  of  talent  as  a  fortunate  nuisance  ;  or, 
as  with  Nordau,  reject  him  (when  a  contemporary) 
as  a  dangerous  attraction,  these  theories  are  not 


DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL  77 

merely  scientifically  questionable,  but  also  (and  this 
is  what  I  wish  to  deal  with)  practically  dangerous, 
because  they  seem  to  limit  spiritual  degeneracy  to 
exceptionally  inferior  or  exceptionally  superior  cate- 
gories of  individuals,  and  to  reassure,  quite  unreasonably, 
the  mediocre  mass  of  mankind.  According  to  them  the 
immense  majority  need  never  take  any  thought  for  its 
psychic  healthiness  ;  all  it  need  do  is  to  follow  its 
instincts,  and  either  to  profit  as  much  (according  to 
Lombroso)  or  to  suffer  as  little  (according  to  Nordau) 
as  it  possibly  can  by  the  useful  or  noxious  peculiarities 
of  degenerates.  Such  are  the  practical  conclusions 
derivable  from  the  too  exclusive  attention  given  by 
even  the  soberer  mental  pathologists  to  criminals  and 
lunatics  ;  still  more  from  the  identification  by  Lombroso 
and  Nordau,  of  genius  and  degeneracy. 

But  fortunately  these  one-sided  views,  these  eccentric 
hypotheses,  have  been  illustrated  by  an  enormous  array 
of  facts,  and  these  facts,  whether  brought  forward 
by  Lombroso  or  Nordau,  whether  exhibited  in  great 
scientific  handbooks  like  those  of  Maudsley  and  Ribot, 
or  huddled  together  in  shilling  dreadfuls  like  Cuiller's 
Frontieres  de  la  Folie,  these  facts  carry  their  own 
suggestion,  to  wit,  that  the  stigmata  of  spiritual 
degeneracy  are  confined  neither  to  criminals,  lunatics, 
nor  persons  of  unusual  ability  ;  and  that  the  average 
man,  the  dull  and  decent  Philistine,  is  equally  in  danger 
of  becoming  an  obstacle  to  human  improvement, 
a  centre  of  moral  and  intellectual  deterioration. 

Apart  from  the  suspicion  that  celebrities  may  have 
been  assimilated  to  criminals  and  lunatics,  because  like 
them  they  have  become  public  property,  and,  therefore, 


78  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

the  corpus  vile  for  pathological  examination  and 
demonstration — the  study  of  the  facts  accumulated 
by  mental  pathologists,  even  the  facts  brought  forward 
to  prove  the  very  reverse  by  Lombroso  and  Nordau, 
must  suggest  very  strange  thoughts  to  any  honest 
and  intelligent,  although  obscure  and  respectable, 
reader.  The  anecdotes  snipped  out  of  biographical 
dictionaries  by  Lombroso,  and  the  analysis  of  symptoms 
implacably  carried  out  by  Nordau,  must  remind  the 
honest  Philistine  of  other  biographical  details,  of  other 
strings  of  peculiarities,  with  which  he  has  not  become 
acquainted  in  books  ;  they  must  become  connected  and 
compared  in  his  memory  with  stories,  words,  gestures, 
expressions  of  face,  states  of  feeling,  which  have  never 
fallen,  which  can  never  fall,  into  the  hands  of  men 
of  science.  Little  by  little,  many  things  which,  on  the 
printed  page,  expressed  in  those  barbarous  technical 
terms,  had  affected  the  reader  only  as  so  much  far-fetched 
specialism,  assume  an  uncomfortable  air  of  familiarity  ; 
until  at  last,  if  he  have  courage  to  put  two  and  two 
together,  he  must  be  startled,  perhaps  overcome,  by 
the  recognition  that  his  neighbours,  friends,  family, 
himself,  resemble  Lombroso's  and  Nordau's  degenerates 
in  other  things  than  genius. 

I  cast  no  doubts  on  the  existence  of  thorough-paced 
degenerates,  some  in  prisons,  some  in  asylums,  some 
walking  abroad,  with  or  without  talents,  and  more 
often  without  than  with ;  all  scientific  evidence 
proves  that  they  are  common,  and  that  many  of  them 
are  hopelessly  incurable  and  through  and  through 
diseased.  But  when  scientific  evidence  is  accumulated 
in  even  greater  bulk,  is  put  before  us  irrespective  of  any 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  79 

special  hypothesis  like  Lombroso's  or  Nordau's,  and 
when  it  is,  moreover,  brought  into  relation  with  our 
previous  experience  of  life  and  of  men,  we  should  learn, 
I  think,  that  it  is  dangerous  to  draw  a  hard-and-fast 
line  between  ourselves  and  any  of  our  fellow  creatures, 
even  when  we  may  be  obliged,  for  sheer  self-defence, 
to  shut  some  of  them  up  and  chastise  them.  To  make 
such  a  crude  distinction  does  as  much  harm  to  us, 
who  account  ourselves  sane,  as  to  these  whom  we 
brand  and  pen  up  together  as  degenerate.  For  it  not 
only  vitiates  our  sense  of  likeness  and  unlikeness, 
diminishes  our  sympathy  and  justice,  and  wastes  all 
that  is  sane  and  profitable,  even  in  unsound  and 
noxious  creatures  ;  but  it  makes  light  of  that  know- 
ledge of  our  present  imperfection,  of  our  possible 
deterioration  and  possible  improvement,  which  should 
result  from  all  study  of  the  soul  and  the  soul's  diseases 
and  dangers. 


II 


•  Degeneracy:  I  would  willingly  get  rid  of  this 
detestable  word,  leave  it  to  mad  doctors  or  criminalo- 
gists  ;  and,  indeed,  degeneracy,  save  as  a  cause,  ought 
to  be  replaced  in  our  thought  by  imperfection,  since 
that  alone  is  of  practical  consequence.  But,  in  the 
study  of  this  imperfection,  in  the  search  for  its  causes, 
we  must  come,  first  and  foremost,  to  something  which, 
for  want  of  a  better  word,  we  must  needs  call 
degeneracy ;  to  the  result,  in  a  minor  degree,  of 
processes  which  lead,  on  a  larger  scale,  to  disease, 
madness,  sterility,  and  death.  In  the  continuous 


8o  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

and  arduous  adaptation  of  mankind  to  its  surroundings, 
there  is,  apparently,  something  which  stands  to  the 
gradual  improvement  as  the  friction  of  a  machine 


stands  to  its  movements  :  the  machinery  is  constantly 
being  repaired,  the  friction  is  constantly  being  dimin- 
ished, but  so  far  it  exists,  and  it  still  represents,  though 
in  ever  smaller  degree,  an  impediment  and  a  partial  de- 
struction. This  kind  of  friction  is  what  specialists 
call  degeneracy.  It  is  a  form  of  imperfection  ;  it  is  the 
result  of  imperfection,  and  it  results  in  imperfection. 
We  may  roughly  divide  it  into  two  kinds,  sociological 
and  biological  ;  the  first  is  left  unconsidered  by 

t  Lombroso  and  Nordau ;  the  second  is  limited,  or 
apparently  limited,  to  separate  categories  of  persons. 

:  In  this  disregard  of  sociological  deterioration,  in  this 
limitation  of  biological  deterioration,  lies  to  my  mind 
the  fundamental  mistake  of  both  Lombroso  and  Nordau, 
a  mistake  which  is  rectified  by  the  very  facts  adduced 
in  support  of  their  one-sided  views. 

The  kind  of  deterioration  which  I  have  called 
sociological  may  be  illustrated  presently  by  an  analysis 
of  some  of  Nordau's  own  failings,  their  probable 
cause  and  their  possible  results.  The  other,  the 
biological,  by  which  I  mean  the  deterioration 
accompanied  by  physical  causes  or  co-results,  forms 
the  subject  of  Nordau's  two  volumes,  and  requires, 
I  think,  to  be  recognised  as  obtaining,  not  merely 
in  the  individuals  stigmatised  as  degenerates,  but  in 
the  whole  of  mankind  of  which  they  are,  after  all, 
but  a  production. 

For  the  whole  of  mankind  may  be  partially 
unsound,  although  the  average  of  mankind  may  be 


• 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  81 

absolutely  sound.  The  average  or  abstract  totality 
of  mankind  is  probably  sound,  because  the  imper- 
fections of  adaptation,  the  inability  to  meet  the 
requirements  of  life,  the  hereditary,  individual,  or 
acquired  biological  taints  are  undoubtedly  slight  in 
most  individuals  (otherwise  the  individual,  let  alone 
the  race,  would  not  be  there),  and  because  the  unsound 
portion  of  one  individual  is  worked  for  and  protected 
by  the  sound  portions  of  other  individuals  ;  nay, 
because  in  every  individual,  save  the  lunatic,  the 
incurable  or  the  criminal,  the  sound  qualities  supply 
the  deficiencies  of  the  unsound.  But  the  individuals 
composing  mankind  are  probably  all,  or  nearly  all, 
imperfect  or  liable  to  become  imperfect  in  some  detail, 
infinitesimal,  or  perceptible,  of  their  organism  ;  were 
this  not  the  case  the  existence  of  thorough-paced 
degeneracy,  as  of  downright  physical  disease,  would 
scarcely  be  conceivable ;  and  the  contagion  of 
degeneracy,  as  well  as  the  contagion  of  disease, 
would  constitute  no  danger.  Why  should  this  be  ? 
The  reason  seems  to  me  very  simple  :  So  far  as  we 
know  the  world's  history  or  present  condition,  we 
cannot  be  certain  of  any  human  creature  living  in 
circumstances,  material  or  social,  to  which  he  was, 
or  is,  perfectly  adjusted ;  nay,  leading  a  life  which 
was  not,  in  one  way  or  another,  too  difficult  for  his 
organism,  what  we  call,  either  on  the  bodily  or  the 
spiritual  plane,  unwholesome  ;  and  this  imperfection 
of  relations  between  the  individual  and  his  mode  of 
existence  would  necessarily  prevent  his  leaving  behind 
him  physical  or  spiritual  off-spring,  human  bodies, 
souls,  habits,  notions,  which  were  otherwise  than 

6 


82  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

imperfect  also  ;  imperfection  dwindling  for  ever, 
but  present  always,  and  always  liable  to  momentary 
increase.  There  is  probably  no  one  who  inherits  an 
absolutely  flawless  bodily  constitution,  or  who  leads 
a  perfectly  healthy  bodily  life ;  but  the  soul  is  as 
delicate  as  the  body,  and  the  soul's  life  as  difficult 
to  adjust ;  nay,  the  soul's  health  has  more  chances 
against  it,  since  it  depends  in  the  first  instance  on  the 
health  of  the  body.  Yet  there  are  very  few  persons 
who  are  as  thoughtful  for  their  soul  and  its  organs, 
as  for  their  teeth,  hair,  eyes,  lungs,  or  digestion  ;  and 


Meanwhile  the  spiritual  reacts  on  the  bodily  and  the 
bodily  on  the  spiritual.  Our  thoughts  and  feelings 
are  vitiated  by  the  imperfection  of  our  bodily  functions  ; 
but  this  imperfection  of  our  bodily  functions  is  nine 
times  out  of  ten  the  result  of  some  spiritual  imper- 
fection, some  lack  of  forethought,  self-control,  or 
comprehension  in  ourselves  or  our  parents.  Thus, 
even  with  regard  to  material  well-being,  there  is  no 
fact  more  important  than  that  of  our  constant  danger 
of  intellectual  and  moral  deterioration. 


Ill 


It  is  the  chief  merit  of  Nordau's  book  that  his 
facts  and  analyses  are  likely  to  bring  home  this  danger 
to  the  reader,  to  suggest  very  shrewd  personal  suspicions 
and  comparisons  to  everybody.  And  it  is  the  chief 


DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL  83 

fault  of  Nordau's  book  (for  who  cares  for  his  literary 
and  artistic  criticisms?)  that  his  mania  for  limiting 
degeneracy  to  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
and  to  the  writers,  artists  and  non-scientific  thinkers  ; 

^~Vv 

thereof,   confines  the  causes  of  degeneracy  to  merely 

physiological  disturbances,   and   diverts  the   attention  •     t^lXc 

from  what  I  should  call  sociological  causes  of  deterio-   , 

ration,  namely,   the  undue  pressure  on  the  individual 

of    social    habits,    routines,    and    institutions.      Such 

sociological    straining   and  warping   of  the   soul   has, 

of  course,  always  existed,  and  presumably  more  in  the 

barbarous  Past  than  in  the  only  semibarbarous  Present. 

Now,  as  Professor  Nordau  wishes  to  persuade  us  that\ 

the    spiritual   degeneracy    of   our    age    is    unique    and= 

unprecedented,   he  has  not  only  to  close  his  eyes  to\ 

all    the    unwholesomeness    which    previous    centuries 

displayed    in    their   literature,    or   hid  or   half-hid  in 

their    religious    and  social    habits  ;  but  also  to  refuse 

to  discuss  any  causes  of  unwholesomeness  which  other 

centuries  have  evidently  shared  with  our  own.     Since, 

however,  we  have  fortunately  no  theory  to  blind  us, 

we    may   leave    Professor     Nordau    to    expatiate    on 

the   detrimental    effects  on    nineteenth-century    nerves 

of  railways  and  newspapers,  telegraphs  and  telephones, 

large  towns  and    colossal  discoveries,  rapid  amassing 

of  fortunes   and    rapid   altering   of  beliefs  ;    and   let 

us  look  at  a  few  of  the  totally  different  sort  of  causes 

which    must    always    have    tended,    apart    from    all 

physiological    degeneracy,     to    deteriorate     a    certain 

proportion  of  individual  souls. 

The  individual  soul,  perhaps  owing  to  its  dependence 
on  the  individual    body,  is  rarely  congenitally  sound 


84  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

in  every  part  ;  and,  even  where  no  rudimentary 
morbidness  can  be  detected,  it  is  never  gifted  with 
the  very  highest  powers  of  every  description  ;  so  that 
it  is  forced,  inevitably,  to  supply  its  deficiencies  from 
the  abundance  of  other  individual  souls,  from  that 
stored-up  abundance  of  all  times  and  countries  which 
we  call  civilisation.  Apart  from  this  common  fund, 
accumulated  by  the  united  efforts  of  all  men,  by  the 
special  efforts  of  special  men,  and  by  the  almost 
mechanical  action  of  the  great  principle  of  "  Compound 
for  sins  you  have  a  mind  to  by  damning  those  you're 
not  inclined  to  " — apart  from  civilisation,  there  is  not 
much  logic,  patience,  self-restraint,  gentleness  or 
purity  in  the  isolated  individual ;  certainly  not  enough 
to  make  him  endurable,  let  alone  useful.  Separate  the 
individual,  even  the  individual  having  no  spiritual 
taint  analogous  to  consumption  or  gout,  isolate  him 
from  the  social  surroundings,  the  principles  and 
prejudices,  the  fortunate  compromises  due  to  the 
rivalry  of  so  much  barbarism  and  wrongheadedness, 
set  him  opposite  something  quite  new,  or  something 
about  which  he  may  talk  or  act  quite  freely  ;  and 
note  the  brute's  acts  and  words  !  Nay,  note  the  man 
when  he  has  a  class  or  nation  to  back  him  ;  and  listen, 
for  instance,  to  the  logic,  the  humane  speech  of  the 
individual  considered  as  Conservative,  or  Socialist,  or 
Protestant,  or  Catholic,  or  Atheist  !  Egotism^  megalo- 
mania ?  Why  they  are  kept  down  in  the  normal 
individual  only  by  the  tendency  to  egotism  and 
megalomania  of  his  neighbours  ;  if  small  children  are 
egotists  and  megalomaniacs,  it  is  because  they  have 
been  protected,  so  far,  from  other  children.  For  the 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  85 

rest,  egotism  and  megalomania  are  perpetually  bursting 
out  on  all  sides.  Listen  to  the  ordinary,  intelligent, 
educated  man,  to  the  superior  professional  man  even, 
when  off  his  profession.  Is  not  his  cocksureness 
about  things  outside  his  own  walk,  his  contempt  of' 
arts  and  modes  of  life  unlike  his  own,  his  interest  in 
his  house,  his  wine,  his  horse,  his  business,  very 
nearly  maniacal  ?  Listen,  on  the  other  hand,  to  nations 
(for  nations  are  unrestrained  by  shame  before  each 
other,  and  consider  such  restraint  as  mean-spirited) 
are  they  not  maniacs  ?  and  is  not  the  respective  national 
pride  of  the  Englishman,  Frenchman,  German,  Italian, 
the  purest  megalomania  in  guise  of  patriotism  ?  Is 
not  every  nation,  in  its  hopes  and  claims,  its  boasting 
and  blustering,  no  better  than  King  Picrochole  awaiting 
the  Coming  of  the  Coqcigrues  ? 

If,  then,  classes,  professions,  nationalities,  lose  their 
attributes  of  logic,  justice,  and  gentleness,  nay,  of 
crassest  good  sense,  whenever  they  are  isolated  from 
other  professions,  classes,  nationalities,  or  set  up  in 
mere  hostility  opposite  to  them,  how  much  more  will 
not  be  lost  by  the  poor  individual,  when,  by  some 
new  or  faulty  adjustment,  he  is  isolated  from  his 
fellow  individuals,  set  up  as  their  enemy  or  their 
leader  ?  These  things  may  be  largely  inevitable, 
but  they  are  atrociously  sad,  and  we  may  well  stop 
to  consider  some  instances  thereof.  Has  neither 
Lombroso  nor  Nordau,  glibly  analysing  the  degeneracy 
of  men  of  talent,  ever  considered  what  men  not  of  talent 
would  become  if  subjected  to  years  of  neglect,  injustice, 
outrage,  and  then,  perhaps,  to  years  of  most  fulsome 
adulation  ?  For,  after  all,  that  is  what  it  comes  to : 


86  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

a  process,  not  deliberate  certainly,  and  for  the  time 
being  quite  inevitable,  by  which  mankind  calls  forth 
all  the  worst  qualities  in  those  who  are  its  benefactors, 
fosters  their  arrogance,  injustice,  violence,  and  folly  ; 
turns  them  into  fanatics  (I  had  first  written  lunatics) 
who  tear  and  trample  everything,  and  help  the  world  in 
the  making  of  fresh  fanatics.  Who  is  most  responsible 
for  Wagner's  pamphlets,  for  Zola's  Mes  Hainesy  for 
all  that  most  degenerate  literature,  the  literature  of 
blind  self-assertion  ?  Nay,  is  not  the  most  marvellous 
production  since  Renaissance  humanistic  warfare, 
Whistler's  Gentle  Art  of  Making  Enemies,  due  to  the 
astonishing  criticisms  of  another  man  of  genius,  of 
Ruskin,  himself  the  victim  of  the  absurd  attacks  on 
Turner  and  pre-Raphaelitism  ?  Alas,  of  the  energies 
which  we  poor  human  beings  can  so  little  afford  to 
spare,  how  much  do  we  not,  by  the  fatality  of  stupidity 
and  injustice,  waste  in  the  detestable  self-assertion 
and  self-defence  of  genius,  in  the  production  of  more 
injustice  and  exaggeration,  itself  fruitful  of  exaggeration 
and  injustice  ! 

But  wrong  adjustment  between  the  individual  and 
the  mass,  need  not  attain  the  pitch  of  actual  ill- 
treatment,  in  order  to  produce  very  decided  deteriora- 
tion, what  Nordau  sees  as  degeneracy,  of  soul.  All 
mental  productivity,  like  all  material,  tends  to  en- 
cumber us  with  obsolete  plant  and  rubbish.  There 
is  no  system,  no  routine,  no  facilitation  to  learning 
or  doing  any  particular  thing,  which  does  not  become 
more  or  less  of  a  nuisance,  a  mechanism  for  the  spoiling 
of  something.  All  trades,  professions,  administrations 
— nay,  schools  of  thought — show  it  us  daily  :  a  man 


DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL  87 


loses  much  of  his  elasticity  of  mind  by  such  means, 
although  that  loss  is  more  than  compensated,  most 
often,  by  the  storage  of  results  and  the  saving  of  time. ,  /; 
But  a  man,  as  Emerson  says,  is  himself  a  method  ; 
every  individual  must  pay  for  the  advantage  of  being  : 
one.  And  this  becomes  the  case  more  and  more 
markedly  as  the  man's  method  is  more  complex,  more 
special,  more  different  from  the  method  of  other  men. 
As  a  mere  question  of  time  and  opportunity,  every 
special  study  tends  to  exclude  external  influence  and 
correction,  to  diminish  the  healthy  reaction  and  re- 
adjustment of  all  things,  that  is  to  say,  to  make  the 
specialist  unconscious  of  the  fine  proportion  between 
the  world  and  his  work,  his  fellow-men  and  himself. 
Nay,  all  self-expression  creates  a  facility  which  easily 
turns  to  exaggeration,  absurdity,  self-caricature.  Men 
cannot  perceive  all  facts  and  think  all  thoughts  at 
once  ;  developing  their  own  ideas,  those  ideas  cease 
to  be  duly  controlled  by  the  thousand  million  other 
ideas  in  the  universe  ;  one  explanation  covers  every- 
thing, one  fact  answers  all  questions,  one  kind  of 
physic  cures  all  ills  ;  and  we  get  very  near  the  region 
of  fads  and  idees  fixes.  This  tendency  is  very  much 
increased  by  the  result  of  another  insufficiency  of 
human  nature  :  mankind  is  extremely  limited,  as  yet, 
not  merely  in  its  power  of  doing,  and  thinking,  but  -  '  ' 
m  its  power  of  sympathising.  The  desire  for  pro- 
minence, for  recognition,  very  often  unjustly  refused, 
pits  men  against  each  other,  while  the  inability  or 
unwillingness  to  share  material  or  social  advantages 
forces  every  member  of  the  same  profession  into 
rivalry  with  the  other  :  hence  a  tendency,  which  pure 


88  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

devotion  to  truth  or  beauty  can  overcome  only  very 
slowly,  a  tendency  to  regard  one's  own  contribution 
to  science  or  art,  as  supplanting  those  of  one's  pre- 
decessors or  neighbours  ;  and  a  consequent  loss  of  the 
faculty  of  comparing  facts  and  theories,  of  selecting 
and  correcting,  of  judging  attainment  impersonally 
and  equitably ;  a  very  notable  diminution  in  the 
efficiency  of  the  individual  soul. 

This  phenomenon  becomes  most  obvious  when  it 
is  accentuated  by  that  neglect  or  persecution  of  which 
I  have  spoken  as  producing  and  reproducing  such  a 
fine  crop  of  apparent  monomaniacs.  The  conscious- 
ness of  exceptional  talents,  especially  when  those  talents 
are  unnoticed  or  disputed  by  others,  carries  combative 
natures  out  of  the  domain  of  good  sense  and  decorum, 
the  almost  automatic  good  sense  and  decorum 
of  those  who  are  comfortable  ;  and  a  man  of  parts 
requires  to  be  an  unusually  good  keeper  of  himself, 
since  he  soon  ceases  to  be  the  ward  of  the  majority. 
The  sense  of  being  able  to  do  what  most  others  cannot, 
needs  to  be  corrected  by  an  appreciation  of  what  has 
to  be  done  and  can  be  done  only  by  others,  such  as 
is  very  rare  as  yet  in  our  half-grown  humanity  ;  and 
when  there  is  no  such  corrective,  the  ego  becomes 
isolated  in  his  own  eyes,  and  assumes  to  himself  an 
importance  utterly  out  of  proportion  to  the  reality. 
Hence  suspicion,  irreverence,  animosity  towards 
others  ;  and  that  refusal  to  unite  one's  thoughts  with 
the  thoughts  of  other  men,  that  refusal  of  what  might 
be  called  (most  literally  and  worthily)  the  marriage  of 
true  minds,  which  dooms  so  much  of  the  world's  best 
talent  to  sterility. 


v 


DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL  89 


IV 


Sterility  ;  or  at  least  production  of  rubbish,  of 
something  which  is  not  intellectually  vital.  For  we 
do  not  sufficiently  realise  how  small  a  share  of  our 
spider's  web  of  thought,  embracing  and  subdividing 
the  universe,  is  either  really  spun  by  ourselves  or  spun 
out  of  the  stuff  secreted  by  our  own  mind  ;  how  much 
the  thought  of  the  individual  requires  to  be  helped  out 
by  a  common  thought,  or  to  draw  from  a  common  fund 
the  sound  material  for  its  web.  Hence  in  all  cases 
where  certain  kinds  of  thinking  have  been  sporadic, 
the  thinkers  of  the  particular  kind  must  be  thrown 
quite  excessively  on  their  own  resources,  and  must 
quickly  exhaust  them.  They  will  become  imperfect 
because  isolated  thinkers  ;  and  their  very  imperfection 
will  increase  their  isolation,  by  depriving  them  of  an 
internal  standard  of  soundness  of  thought  which  might 
replace  the  external  one.  We  notice  this  in  the 
middle  ages  :  while  the  artists,  theologians,  and  jurists, 
the  men  whose  activity  is  incorporated  with  that 
of  others,  keep  their  heads  very  securely  on  their 
shoulders,  and  their  notions  in  sane  reference  to  exist- 
ing knowledge,  we  find  outside  these  intellectual  guilds, 
as  soon  as  we  get  to  the  sporadic  thinkers  who  deal 
with  natural  science  or  high  philosophy,  the  eccentricity 
and  pretentiousness  of  quackery.  These  isolated 
thinkers — Joachim  of  Flora,  Raymond  Lulle,  Cardan, 
Paracelsus,  are  made  giddy  by  their  own  height  above 
others,  by  the  void  they  feel  around  them  :  they  get 
to  think  themselves  paragons,  possessors  of  universal 


90  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

knowledge  and  power,  prophets  and  sole  spiritual 
legislators.  And  in  the  neglected  fields  of  thought 
which  correspond  to  what  natural  science  and  non- 
theological  philosophy  were  in  the  middle  ages,  we, 
too,  have  our  sporadic  thinkers,  half  seers  and  half 
nostrum  vendors,  Carlyle,  Tolstoi,  Nietzsche,  and 
others  ;  men  whose  splendid  achievements  are  due 
to  their  own  genius,  while  their  blunders  and  exag- 
gerations are  largely  caused  by  the  stupidity  of  their 
neighbours. 

It  is  the  same  with  moral  standards  as  with  in- 
tellectual ones  ;  here  again  it  is  unnecessary  to 
postulate  physiological  degeneracy  as  an  explana- 
tion of  mischievous  theory  and  theoretically  based 
action,  new  fangled  or  revived  from  former  days. 
Every  society  undoubtedly  contains  a  proportion  of 
individuals  who  are  morally  less  developed  than  the 
average,  particularly  than  the  average  ought  to  be, 
and  in  whom  the  imperfection  takes  the  form  of  in- 
difference or  rebellion  towards  the  rules  of  conduct 
received  by  the  majority.  But  is  there  not  likewise 
another  contingent  of  morally  inferior  persons  whose 
inferiority,  being  of  the  sluggish,  passive,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  impulsive,  kind,  manifests  itself  on 
the  contrary  in  servile  acquiescence  to  the  decisions  of 
the  majority,  in  automatic  mimicry  of  the  majority's 
proceedings  ?  And  is  the  one  class,  which  rebels 
against  what  may  be  good  in  our  moral  and  social 
institutions,  really  more  mischievous  than  the  other, 
which  clings  heavily  to  what  may  be  bad  ?  For,  after 
all,  moral  precepts,  and  particularly  the  habitual,  prac- 
tical, unspoken  adaptations  thereof,  represent  the  worse 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  91 

as  well  as  the  better  portion  of  our  very  mixed  man- 
kind. And  there  are  several  kinds  of  outlaws  ;  those 
who  are  too  bad  completely  to  imitate  their  neigh- 
bours, those  who  are  too  good,  and  those,  again, 
I  am  tempted  to  think,  who  are  comparatively  free 
either  to  conform  or  not  to  conform,  not  from  any 
superiority  or  inferiority,  but  from  lack  of  imitative- 
ness,  lack  of  sense  of  congruity,  partial  independence 
of  position,  or  absorbing  interest  in  other  matters  : 
a  class  of  apparent  sceptics  or  indifFerents,  which  keeps 
the  others  from  excess,  which  often  holds  the  casting 
vote  ;  and  to  which  most  individuals,  superior  or 
inferior  in  their  main  characteristics,  may  belong  by 
some  isolated  habit  or  notion.  These  three  classes 
of  nonconformity  may  be  easily  distinguished  wherever 
men  and  women  gather  together  for  the  promulgation 
of  schemes  of  life,  modes  of  thought,  and  forms  of  art 
which  the  majority  dislikes  or  despises,  from  the 
Theatre  Libre  to  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
and  from  the  revivals  of  ritualists  or  evangelists  to  the 
meetings  of  socialists  or  anarchists.  Looked  at  from 
the  merely  intellectual  point  of  view,  the  meeting  of 
these  three  classes,  associated  merely  by  the  fact  of 
elimination  from  a  larger  class,  explains  why  eccentri- 
city, faddism,  even  positive  monomania,  always  forms 
a  fringe  to  every  centre  of  new  and  independent 
thought  ;  even  as  the  fact  of  individual  isolation  has 
explained,  I  think,  the  fringe  of  mysticism  and  fanati- 
cism which  surrounds  the  soundest  thought  of  very 
solitary  individual  thinkers.  As  regards  moral  atmo- 
sphere and  even  practical  habits,  this  inevitable  herding 
together  of  outlawed  persons,  as  of  outlawed  thoughts, 


92  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

whatever  the  reason  of  this  outlawry,  explains  the 
chief  dangers  of  all  revolutionary  movements,  as  it 
explains  the  main  degradations  of  highly  independent 
characters.  In  any  sort  of  revolution  the  highest  and 
the  lowest  are  always  thrust  together  ;  the  purest 
patriot  and  reformer  is  apt  to  find  himself  the  associate 
of  fanatics  and  criminals,  rick  burners  and  bomb 
throwers,  for  the  mere  reason  that  the  powers  that  be, 
finding  all  disturbance  equally  distressing,  have  set 
their  face  against  subversive  ideas,  as  well  as  against 
deeds  of  violence.  Nay,  the  community  of  persecution 
almost  infallibly  warps  the  judgment  of  even  the 
noblest  thinker  ;  the  awful  strain  of  opposition,  the 
lamentable  dreariness  of  isolation,  make  him  come 
in  contact  with,  even  lean  against,  the  men  and  things 
he  resembles  least,  because  he  is  cut  off  from  the 
men  and  things  that  he  resembles  most.  And  as 
with  men,  so  with  thoughts.  The  rational  contempt 
for  creeds  and  regulations  which  are  foolish  and 
harmful,  drags  with  it,  in  most  cases,  the  irrational 
contempt  for  creeds  and  regulations  which  are  wise 
and  useful ;  we  know,  all  of  us  who  have  had  free- 
thinking  or  revolutionary  grandfathers  and  grand- 
mothers, that  the  waywardness  and  lawlessness  of 
notion  of  a  man  like  Shelley  need  not  have  been  the 
result  of  any  biological  peculiarity  ;  and  that,  if  they 
were  to  any  extent  deteriorations,  they  were  not 
necessarily  what  Nordau  calls  stigmata  of  degeneracy. 
Indeed,  we  need  only  search  our  own  souls  for  the 
queer  comradeship  of  outlawed  thought.  And  are  we 
not  made  more  lenient  towards  the  vapourings  of 
neo-mystics,  the  egotism  and  depravity  of  decadents, 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  93 

the  uncleanness  of  realists,  by  knowing  that  Professor 
Nordau  would  like,  if  he  could,  to  set  up  a  Holy 
Office  and  an  Index  Expurgatorius,  and  to  commit 
to  the  flames  the  books,  to  the  maison  de  sante  the 
bodies,  of  all  the  writers  whom,  in  the  name  of  an 
immutable  and  officially  consecrated  psychological 
science,  he  has  condemned  as  degenerate  ? 


But  the  great  undefinable  thing  which  we  call 
civilisation  progresses  despite  all  friction,  makes  im- 
provement daily  greater  despite  drawbacks,  diminishes 
year  by  year  the  proportion  of  evil  involved  in  its  good. 
Spiritual  degeneracy,  deterioration  of  the  man  and  of 
his  thought,  is  still  going  on  lustily  all  round,  like  the 
physical  degeneracy  of  which  it  is  sometimes  the  result, 
and  sometimes  the  cause.  National  and  class  separa- 
tion, professional  routine  and  limitation,  social  rivalry, 
isolation  of  the  exceptional  individual  and  consequent 
self-assertion  ;  herding  together  of  various  kinds  of 
nonconformity  and  consequent  pollution  of  the  superior 
eccentric  by  the  inferior  ;  all  these  maladjustments — 
these  lesser  of  two  evils  which  are  yet  evils  in  them- 
selves— are  filling  the  world  with  damaged  thought 
and  feeling  which  beget  in  their  turn  feeling  and  thought 
more  damaged  still.  Despite  all  this,  the  maladjustments ' 
are  diminishing,  the  inevitable  evils  growing  less  evil. 
And  in  one  thing  particularly,  perhaps  because  our 
commercial  society  weighs  lightly  on  mere  opinion, 
perhaps  also  (let  us  hope)  because  our  growing  good 


94  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

sense  recognises  good  sense  wherever  it  finds  it — in  one 
thing  may  we  watch  a  constant  diminution  of  intel- 
lectual damage  :  there  is  less  of  the  particular  kind  of 
friction  called  intolerance. 

Cocksureness,  infallibility,  readiness  to  defend  the 
universe  from  our  private  adversaries,  is  ceasing  to  be 
identified  with  honesty,  sincerity,  magnanimity  ;  it  is 
beginning  to  skulk  and  mask  itself  in  garments  of 
tolerance  and  reasonable  scepticism.  The  ardour  of 
reformation  is  at  length,  thank  Heaven,  beginning  to 
turn  a  little  upon  ourselves,  our  ideas  and  associates  ; 
or  to  restrain  at  least  its  readiness  to  clear  the  world  of 
other  people's  faults  and  errors.  That  things  are  really 
moving  in  this  direction  is  proved,  I  think,  by  our 
general  astonishment  at  Professor  Nordau's  book. 
His  absolute  self-confidence,  his  unsuspecting  readiness 
to  apply  his  own  standards  and  judge  all  men  and 
things  on  his  own  responsibility,  his  prophetic  violence 
of  vituperation  and  fury  of  destruction,  his  outspoken 
willingness  to  undertake  the  saving  of  society  ;  all 
these  are  things  which  would  scarcely  have  surprised  us 
in  the  not  very  far-off  days  when  Ruskin  was  writing 
Modern  Painters  and  Karl  Marx  On  Capital;  they 
were  the  accompaniment  of  the  highest  philosophic 
discrimination  a  century  ago,  as  we  can  verify  by 
re-reading  our  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  or  Diderot.  But 
now,  thank  Heaven  again,  they  surprise  us  beyond 
measure  in  a  populariser  of  scientific  notions,  and  even 
lead  to  the  suspicion  that  Professor  Nordau  may  belong 
to  his  own  vast  tribe  of  degenerates.  I  do  not  think, 
therefore,  that  unless  the  world  become  socialistically 
organised,  and  the  care  of  men's  souls  become  once 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  95 

more  a  matter  of  state-jobbery,  I  do  not  think  we  need 
be  really  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of  a  committee  of 
spiritual  public  safety,  examining  all  literature,  and  art 
and  philosophy,  and,  by  an  efficient  organisation  of 
lay-confraternities,  lay-inquisitions,  and  lay-excommu- 
nications, sweeping  off  the  face  of  the  earth  all  heretics 
guilty  of  offending  the  ways  of  Nature  or  Nordau. 
People  will  remember  that  improvement,  as  well  as 
deterioration,  is  often  found  disagreeable  and  danger- 
ous ;  they  will  reflect  that  Nature  herself  is  the  greatest 
of  all  innovators  ;  they  may  even  be  morbid  enough 
(in  Nordau's  opinion)  to  think  with  profit  on  the 
symbol  of  the  Son  of  God  crucified  between  thieves, 
while  the  High  Priest  and  Pilate  sit  at  meat  with  the 
very  best  people.  So  we  need  waste  no  more  words 
against  the  proposed  new  Inquisition. 

But  Professor  Nordau's  book,  as  I  have  tried  to 
suggest  throughout  these  criticisms,  should  furnish  us 
nevertheless  with  food  for  exceedingly  salutary  and 
needful  thought  ;  and  this  as  much  through  its  short- 
comings as  its  merits,  its  practical  absurdities  as  its 
scientific  wisdom. 

We  are  all  of  us  liable  to  becoming  if  not  degenerate, 
then  at  least  undesirable  :  faulty,  poor  of  stuff,  and 
scant  of  measure  in  the  very  things  we  most  insist 
upon  ;  and  we  all  require,  in  our  families,  friends, 
neighbours,  but  first  and  foremost  in  ourselves,  to  keep 
a  sharp  look-out,  to  fight  against  these  faultinesses  and 
shortcomings.  It  is  difficult  to  guess  whether,  in  free- 
ing ourselves  from  the  many  enervations  of  the 
confessional,  we  have  or  have  not  lost  something  which 
made,  in  other  ways,  for  spiritual  health.  At  any  rate 


96  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

no  one  can  deny  that  indifference  to  the  soul's  hygiene 
is  one  of  the  drawbacks  of  our  present  accidental, 
helter-skelter,  unintelligent  form  of  individualism.  No 
one  goes  nowadays  to  the  doctor  for  a  spiritual 
diagnosis,  and  perhaps  it  is  better  there  should  be  no 
such  doctor  to  go  to  ;  but  no  one  even  asks  his  friend 
metaphorically  to  feel  his  pulse  or  look  at  his  tongue, 
or  has  a  friend  to  whom  either  pulse  or  tongue,  in  the 
spiritual  order,  could  reveal  anything  ;  nobody  knows 
anything  about  the  symptoms  of  his  soul's  health  or 
disease,  or  supposes  anything  to  be  of  the  nature  of 
such  symptoms.  Hence  most  of  us — all  of  us  who 
have  received  no  strong  religious  bias — prepare  to  go 
through  life  on  the  supposition  that  we  are  sound 
because  we  are  we ;  what  we  feel  in  ourselves  we  take 
to  be  normal ;  our  preferences  and  aversions  seem  the 
only  possible  ones  under  the  circumstances,  simply  and 
merely  because  we  know  of  no  others  and  institute  no 
comparisons.  Meanwhile — and  here  comes  in  the 
great  utility  of  books  like  Nordau's,  including  a  large 
proportion  of  Nordau's  own  book  — it  is  just  as  likely 
as  not  that  we  may  be  developing,  in  our  innermost 
self,  tendencies  and  habits  destructive,  if  not  to  others 
directly,  then  indirectly  through  the  impairing  of  our 
own  physical  and  spiritual  efficiency  ;  we  may  be  allow- 
ing ourselves  to  become,  through  the  pressure  of  ex- 
ternal circumstances,  semi-maniacs  and  semi-criminals, 
where  we  might,  had  we  known,  have  remained 
sane  and  harmless.  Nay,  the  general  opinion  on  this 
subject,  so  far  as  there  is  any,  tends  to  consider  it 
safest  that  we  should  go  on  blindly  among  dangers  of 
this  sort,  and  avoid  madness  by  not  knowing  which 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  97 

way  madness  lies.     It  is  of  course  possible  that  the 
knowledge  of  danger  may  create  panic  ;  that  the  read- 


ing ofbooks  like  Nordau's  may  lead  to  egotistic  self- 
analysis,  scared  self-diagnosis,  and  in  a  measure, 
perhaps,  self-suggestion  of  avoidable  peculiarities.  But, 
after  all,  how  many  of  us  have  not  already  suffered  in 
ignorance,  tortured  and  damaged  ourselves,  as  Renan 
did  in  his  childhood  with  the  notion  of  simony,  and 
Bunyan  with  the  possibility  of  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  ;  merely  to  return,  because  of  our  ignorance,  to 
the  same  bad  ways  we  have  been  torturing  ourselves 
about.  Surely  it  is  not  merely  more  safe,  but  in  the 
long  run  more  comfortable,  for  the  spiritual  valetudi- 
narian to  know  once  for  all  what  he  had  better  do  and 
better  avoid,  what  forms  of  infection  he  is  likely  to 
catch,  what  kinds  of  strain  he  is  least  able  to  endure, 
what  rules  of  exercise  and  diet  he  must  observe  ;  what, 
in  the  domain  of  the  soul,  are,  to  all  men  or  to  him 
individually,  tonics  or  poisons. 

All  these  possibilities  and  probabilities  are  most 
usefully  brought  before  us  in  Professor  Nordau's 
analyses  of  degeneracy  in  general,  and  even  in  those 
criticisms  of  living  authors  which,  however  far-fetched 
and  unjust  in  their  particular  application,  are  neverthe- 
less correct  as  accounts  of  the  more  subtle  and  latent 
forms  of  spiritual  disease.  On  the  other  hand, 
Professor  Nordau,  if  we  analyse  his  most  glaring  faults, 
is  a  good  warning  of  what  we  might  all  come  to  if 
we  did  not  resist  the  deteriorating  effects  of  social 
mechanisms,  the  tendency  to  produce  apparent  degene- 
racy inherent  in  most  of  our  social  difficulties  and 
discomforts,  and  in  many  of  our  facilitations  and 

7 


98  DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL 

advantages.  For  Professor  Nordau  is  the  type  of  the 
specialist,  highly  valuable  in  his  own  speciality,  but 
•  AjJuGbk*-  acquiring  in  its  exercise  a  faith  in  his  own  infallibility, 
blindness  to  all  qualities  save  those  treated  by  his 
own  study  or  required  for  its  prosecution,  which  allow 
him  to  approach  all  other  fields  without  perception  of 
their  requirements  and  his  incompetence  ;  the  very 
adaptation  of  thought  to  his  own  line  preventing  his 
understanding  the  different  thought  of  others.  While, 
to  make  the  typical  warning  complete,  his  own  rash- 
ness and  injustice  rousing  against  him  all  the  thoughtless, 
unscrupulous  combativeness  of  others,  surrounds  him 
with  what  appears  a  world  of  imbecility  and  wickedness, 
against  which  he  feels  justified  in  venting  all  his  own 
least  intelligent  brutality.  Until,  to  those  who  can 
resist  the  contagion  of  absurdity  and  injustice,  Nordau 
becomes,  as  I  have  said,  a  typical  warning,  filling  one 
with  a  holy  terror  ("  Alios  age  incitatos  alios  age 
rabidos  ")  of  being  run  away  with  by  any  idea  however 
excellent,  of  letting  one's  self  be  fuddled  or  made 
uproarious  by  the  very  best  intellectual  wine. 

One  word  more.  The  reader  will  lay  down  Nordau's 
volume,  and  perhaps  my  criticism  thereof,  with  a  vague 
notion  that  whatever  may  be  the  truth  about  degene- 
racy, the  Philistine  (and  we  are  all  Philistines  in  most 
of  our  capacities)  is  safe,  neither  dangerous  nor  in 
danger.  Now  this,  in  the  name  and  in  the  face  of  all 
the  Philistines  of  Creation,  is  what  I  desire  to  protest 
against.  In  the  first  place,  as  I  have  just  remarked, 
every  man  and  woman  is  in  some  things  a  Philistine, 
born  of  Philistines  and  brought  up  in  the  air  of  Philistia. 
In  the  second  place,  the  Philistine,  taken  as  an  indiv?- 


DETERIORATION   OF   SOUL  99 

dual,  is  far  from  necessarily  wholesome  or  social,  as 
distinguished  from  anti-social  and  morbid.  His  un- 
genial  defects  (taking  genial  in  the  psychologist's  sense 
as  well  as  the  other)  are  none  the  less  dangerous  because 
they  are  shared  by  ten  thousand  others  more  or  less 
like  himself;  nor  are  his  anti-social  ways,  his  habits 
of  vanity,  lust,  rapacity,  and  sloth  less  detrimental 
because  they  are  confined  within  the  limits  of  laws  and 
customs  which  he  himself  has  made  or  levelled  up  to. 
He  is  not  a  degenerate,  very  likely ;  but  he  is  an 
imperfect  being,  and  every  one  pays  for  his  imperfec- 
tions. Are  religious  bigotry,  social  snobbishness, 
official  corruption,  industrial  grabbingness,  tolerated 
vice,  parental  and  conjugal  tyranny,  due  to  exceptional 
degenerate  individuals  or  to  the  normal  mass  ?  What 
if  the  standard,  the  norm  is  low  ?  Nay,  are  not  degene- 
rates themselves  due  to  the  normals'  wretched  in- 
efficiency ?  Does  not  the  selfishness  and  shortsighted- 
ness of  the  normal  mass  foster  every  form  of  cussedness, 
exaggeration,  fanaticism,  that  is  to  say,  wrong  individual 
attitude,  either  by  its  assistance  or  the  opposition  ? 
Inquire  into  cases  of  infraction  of  social  laws  :  have 
those  who  infringe  them  been  dealt  with  wisely  ?  are 
the  laws  they  break  (however  foolishly  and  selfishly) 
unselfish,  allwise  laws,  particularly  framed  in  view  to  - 
their  happiness?  In  a  word,  does  society  not  pro-  -f 
duce  its  own  degenerates  and  criminals,  even  as  theJW^f*-  A 
body  produces  its  own  diseases,  or  at  least  fosters L/.^  tjtj^ 
them  ? 

This  is  no  anti-social  tirade  ;  neither  anarchy  nor 
egotism  is  my  special  form  of  degeneracy.  The 
individual,  it  seems  to  me,  becomes  weak  and  limited 


ioo  DETERIORATION   OF  SOUL 

in  proportion  as  he  is  isolated  and  self-centred.  But 
we  must  not  count  too  much  upon  the  soundness  of 
the  majority,  nor  imagine  that  it  is  necessarily  more 
complete  than  the  individual.  All  class  prejudice,  half 
of  what  we  call  national  feeling,  is  merely  accumu- 
lated and  inveterate  spiritual  degeneracy  ;  and  so  far 
from  the  majority  being  able,  in  such  matters,  to  pro- 
tect the  individual,  it  is  only  the  individual,  the 
eccentric,  nonconforming,  rebellious  individual,  who 
can,  in  the  long  run,  save  the  majority.  We  are 
always,  and  always  have  been  (pace  Professor  Nordau), 
surrounded  by  causes  of  degeneracy,  and  perhaps  the 
one  we  need  most  guard  against  nowadays  is  the  notion 
that  society  can  relieve  the  individual  from  his  spiritual 
difficulties  and  defend  him  from  his  spiritual  dangers. 
Most  dangers  are  not  the  same  to  all  individuals,  but 
bigotry  and  fanaticism  are  dangers  to  every  individual ; 
and  to  the  community,  they  are  greater  dangers  than 
morbid  peculiarities  of  a  less  spreading  kind.  The 
worst  kind  of  spiritual  degeneracy  is  surely  that  which 
is  gregarious,  and  which,  for  that  reason,  is  unsuspect- 
ing of  its  own  existence.  To  combat  it  we  require  to 
hear  every  one,  to  allow  every  variety  of  human  being 
to  express  itself ;  we  require  to  compare  opinion  with 
opinion,  to  correct  bias  by  bias,  to  level  exaggeration 
by  exaggeration,  to  taste  of  all  that  we  may  select  in 
everything.  For  the  rule  of  life  is  selection ;  not  merely 
of  us  by  nature  and  fate,  but  by  us  of  fate  and  nature. 
Our  souls  are  beset  by  dangerous  tendencies,  notions, 
and  examples  :  let  every  individual,  therefore,  scrutinise 
and  select  among  the  tendencies  and  notions  of  others  ; 
scrutinise  and  select  more  carefully  still  among  the 


DETERIORATION  OF  SOUL  101 

tendencies  and  notions  he  may  find  in  himself.  Against 
degeneracy  of  soul  there  is,  after  all,  but  one  sweeping 
remedy  :  the  determination  to  alter  continually  for  the 
better ;  the  determination  to  become,  rather  than  to 
remain,  absolutely  sane. 


TOLSTOI    AS    PROPHET 

NOTES   ON   THE   PSYCHOLOGY   OF  ASCETICISM 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET 

NOTES    ON    THE    PSYCHOLOGY    OF    ASCETICISM 

IN  his  religious  and  philosophical  writings,  Count 
Tolstoi  would  seem  to  represent  the  prophetic 
temperament  in  such  incarnation  as  is  likely  to  become 
the  commonest,  indeed  perhaps  the  only  possible,  one 
in  the  near  future.  For,  in  the  gradual  disruption  of 
dogmatic  creeds,  the  man  born  to  the  prophetic  quality 
and  function  tends  more  and  more  to  be  a  heretic  and 
an  anarchist ;  to  practise  an  exegesis  backed  by  no 
authority  ;  and  to  benefit  or  harass  mankind,  to  exhibit 
to  mankind  the  spectacle  of  prophecy,  more  and  more 
obviously  without  any  inspiration  save  the  unquestioned 
one  of  his  own  individual  constitution.  The  Prophet, 
being  a  type  of  humanity,  represents  certain  impulses 
for  good  and  evil  existing  in  numbers  of  his  fellow- 
creatures,  is  in  fact  a  specimen  of  a  human  force  of  the 
universe ;  and  he  not  only  displays  in  crudest  isolation 
special  tendencies  making  for  life's  greater  fruitfulness 
or  sterility,  but  also  directs  the  scathing  light  of  almost 
monomaniacal  perception  on  matters  which  the  average 
routine  of  existence  neglects  to  our  disadvantage.  The 

Prophet  is  useful  as  a  teacher  ;  but  still  more  useful 

105 


io6  TOLSTOI  AS  PROPHET 

as  a  lesson.  It  is  in  this  double  capacity  that  the 
following  marginal  notes  may  help  to  put  to  use  the 
prophet,  not  the  artist,  Tolstoi. 


"  To  the  man  perverted  by  the  false  doctrines  of  the 
century,  it  seems,"  &c.,  &c. 

This  form  of  words,  perpetually  recurring  through- 
out Tolstoi's  didactic  writings,  acquaints  us  with  one 
of  the  chief  drawbacks  of  the  prophetic  mind  :  an  in- 
capacity so  utter  of  conceiving  any  views  different 
from  his  own,  that  they  appear  monstrous  not  merely 
in  their  results  but  also  in  their  origin.  "  Perverse," 
"  False,"  a  kind  of  devil's  spawn  in  vacuo.  Now,  the 
wonderful  tenacity  of  false  doctrines  and  perverse 
attitudes  would  suggest,  to  such  as  are  not  prophets, 
that  there  may  be  something  to  be  said  in  their  favour  ; 
that  such  falseness  and  perverseness  may  be  an  inevitable 
— nay,  a  necessary — stage  of  something  else  ;  that  it 
is,  in  some  fashion,  in  league  with  the  ways  of  things. 
The  theologians  of  the  past  could  postulate  Original 
Sin  or  the  Fundamental  Abominableness  of  Matter  ; 
but  one  might  expect  that  the  prophets  of  our  own 
day,  Stirner  and  Nietzsche,  quite  as  much  as  Tolstoi, 
would  have  forfeited  this  logical  advantage  and  desisted 
from  judging  all  things  as  if  they  had  been  intended 
to  please  just  them.  Not  a  bit  ;  the  prophetic  tem- 
perament has  remained  unchanged  ;  and  all  prophets- 
prophets  of  cynicism,  quite  as  much  as  prophets  of 
asceticism— display  the  same  alacrity  in  seating  them- 


TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET  107 

selves  down  ad  dexteram  Domini,  or,  indeed,  on  the 
throne  off  which  the  Lord  has  been  hustled  as  some 
sort  of  idol.  What  unhesitating  rapidity  they  display, 
those  great  nostrum-mongers,  not  merely  in  defining 
the  world's  contents  and  making  plans  for  its  complete 
overhauling,  but  in  packing  off  everything  which  does 
not  suit  them  to  the  bottomless  pit  !  Mankind,  in  the 
mean  while,  like  some  half-hearted  follower  of  Savon- 
arola, shoves  the  false  and  -perverse  doctrines  not  into  the 
destroying  flames,  but  merely  into  the  dust-heap,  whence 
they  are  incontinently  extracted,  for  exclusive  use,  by 
another  Prophet  or  another  School  of  Prophecy.  Let 
no  one  take  these  remarks  for  the  raillery  of  scepticism  : 
the  thorough-paced  sceptic  of  modern  days  (my  ingeni- 
ous friend  H.  B.  Brewster,  for  instance)  is  just  as  much 
carried  away  by  the  spirit  of  prophecy  as  the  dogmatists 
whom  he  scoffs  at.  I  am  speaking  as  a  mere  looker- 
on,  vaguely  conscious  that,  since  they  all  exist,  these 
various  excessive  views  must  each  answer  to  some 
aspect  of  reality  ;  vaguely  regretting,  also,  that  we, 
less  specially  gifted  creatures,  should  waste  so  much  of 
the  scant  time  given  us  for  the  application  of  truth  in 
sorting  the  litter  of  exaggerations  and  the  rubbish  of 
anathema  with  which  the  great  One-sided  Ones 
encumber  the  earth. 

The  heap  of  valuable  and  worthless  things  con- 
stituted by  Tolstoi's  philosophical  and  moral  writings 
is  the  better  worth  our  sorting  that,  in  trying  to  under- 
stand this  latest  addition  to  the  literature  of  prophetic 
asceticism,  we  shall  be  learning  to  understand,  perhaps 
to  select  and  profit  by,  some  other  ascetic  doctrines,  of 
so  ancient  an  origin  and  such  habitual  repetition  that 


io8  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

we  have  almost  ceased  to  look  either  for  their  psycho- 
logical reason  or  for  their  practical  application. 


II 


"  Like  the  penitent  thief,  I  knew  that  I  was  unhappy, 
that  I  suffered,  and  that  all  the  human  beings  around  me 
were  suffering  and  feeling  themselves  unhappy  .  .  .  and, 
even  as  the  penitent  thief  (nailed  to  his  cross)  saw 
coming  towards  him  the  horrid  darkness  of  death  .  .  . 
so  I  saw  the  same  prospect  open  before  me." 

The  words  I  have  italicised  contain  the  main  postu- 
late of  all  pessimism,  and  of  nearly  all  asceticism, 
religious  as  well  as  philosophical,  Buddhist  and  Stoical, 
of  Schopenhauer  as  much  as  of  the  "  Imitation."  The 
pessimist  is  unhappy  :  therefore  every  one  else  is  ;  he 
sees  no  meaning  in  life  save  that  of  his  ascetic  formula  : 
therefore  there  is  none ;  he  is  afraid  of  death  :  therefore 
fear  of  death  is  in  every  breast.  And  this  gratuitous 
classification  of  all  mankind  under  one's  own  headings 
is  justified  by  the  additional  generalisation,  that  those 
who  imagine  themselves  to  feel  or  think  differently  are 
perverted  by  false  doctrine  or  sunk  in  beastlike  in- 
difference. 


Ill 


After  this  follows  logically  the  second  postulate  of 
such  as  think,  or  rather  of  such  as  are  constituted,  like 
Tolstoi : 

"  Why  had  I  not  earlier  put  in  practice  this  doctrine 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  109 

which  gives  me  happiness  ?     The  answer  is  very  simple: 
Because  I  did  not  know  the  truth" 

At  first  sight,  it  seems  strange  that  the  creator  of 
such  marvellously  living  beings  as  Natacha,  Peter 
Besukoff,  Princess  Mary,  Anna  Karenine,  Oblonsky 
or  Levine  should  not  have  been  able  to  think,  what 
he  so  clearly  felt  and  showed  in  them,  that  human 
beings  do  not  seek  happiness  but  obey  instincts,  and  that 
the  greatest  mass  of  probable  happiness  in  front  has 
little  attractive  power  save  when  it  coincides  with  the 
vis  a  tergo^  the  forward  push  of  cravings,  tendencies 
and  habits.  One  might  imagine  that  in  Tolstoi  the 
novelist's  conception  was  so  concrete  and  individual, 
the  novelist's  genius  so  automatic  and  unreasoning,  as 
to  reduce  the  powers  of  analysis  and  generalisation  to 
almost  childish  insignificance.  Be  this  as  it  may,  this 
greatest  painter  of  human  character,  able  to  copy  with 
faultless  precision  the  soul's  actual  workings,  seems 
not  to  know  the  rudiments  of  the  soul's  physiology  or 
mechanics,  on  which  those  workings  depend.  It  never 
seems  to  enter  his  head  that,  if  this  "  knowledge,"  this 
paramount  doctrine  of  such  direct  application  and  in- 
fallible virtue,  has  remained  hidden,  obscured,  for  near 
nineteen  hundred  years,  there  must  have  been,  in  man- 
kind, but  a  very  faint  need  for  a  remedy  so  near  at 
hand  ;  nor  that  this  inefficacy  in  so  long  a  past  argues 
but  small  immediate  result  in  the  present ;  those  self- 
same interests  which  hid  or  distorted  this  doctrine  of 
salvation  showing,  by  their  tenacity,  that  it  is  absurd 
to  expect  them  to  yield  and  disappear  of  a  sudden  and 
as  by  miracle.  But  the  fact  is  that  Tolstoi,  much  as 
he  would  disclaim  it,  not  only  admits  of  miracle,  but 


no  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

bases  all  his  hope  upon  it.  His  own  experience  is  of 
a  miraculous  kind,  simply  because,  to  his  own  powers 
of  observation,  the  thing  which  really  happened,  the 
way  it  happened,  is  necessarily  hidden.  Tolstoi's  con- 
version is  one  of  those  of  which  all  religious  autobio- 
graphy is  full,  and  of  which  Professor  William  James 
has  put  together  so  fine  a  volume  of  specimens.  At 
a  given  moment  in  a  man's  life,  either  after  a  period 
of  religious  stress  or  with  apparent  total  suddenness, 
something  takes  place  in  the  soul :  the  doubts,  scruples, 
fears,  despair,  vanish  ;  and  in  their  place  is  a  new  set 
of  hopes,  a  new  vital  certainty,  or  (as  the  doctor  in 
Ibsen's  play  would  call  it)  a  new  "  Vital  Lie."  What 
is  it  that  actually  happened  ?  The  souls  liable  to  such 
complete  change  and  renovation,  sudden  or  gradual, 
are  those  least  likely  to  be  able  to  tell  us.  For  the 
concentration  of  one  kind  of  feeling,  the  un familiarity 
of  the  elements  formerly  latent  and  now  dominant,  the 
very  completeness  of  former  despair  and  present  joy, 
make  him  who  experiences  such  a  conversion  incapable 
of  observing,  and  perhaps  of  conceiving,  its  real 
nature. 

The  conversion  of  Tolstoi  is  not  a  sudden  one  ;  but 
it  is  characterised  by  the  mono-ideism  of  such  phe- 
nomena. The  intensity  and  exclusiveness  of  his  long 
and  suicidal  broodings  did  not  leave  in  his  soul  that 
lucid,  disinterested  half  which  can  understand  and 
intelligently  record  :  there  was  but  one  self  at  work, 
one  self  floundering  in  nightmare  and  suddenly  lifted 
to  beatific  relief.  Tolstoi  fails  to  notice  what  strikes 
every  spectator  from  the  first — namely,  that  in  his  least 
regenerate  days,  his  most  carnal  and  perversely 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  in 

thinking  days,  he  dealt  preferably  with  characters 
unknown  to  previous  novelists,  Peter,  Andre,  Levine, 
men  haunted  already  by  the  very  thought  which  was  to 
overshadow  his  own  mind,  the  eternal  query  :  "  Why 
live,  since  one  must  die  ? "  That  such  should  have 
been  his  heroes  shows  that  he  knew  more  of  asceticism 
than  other  novelists  perhaps  capable  of  creating  his 
other  characters — say,  Wronsky  or  Nicholas  RostofF. 
This,  evidently,  never  strikes  Tolstoi  himself.  Still 
less,  of  course,  does  it  occur  to  him  that  the  importance, 
taken  in  his  mind  by  that  recurring  "  Why  ? "  let  alone 
the  fact  of  its  having,  in  the  midst  of  prosperity, 
driven  him  to  the  verge  of  suicide,  shows  that  he  was 
constitutionally  destined  to  concentrate  on  this  problem  ; 
or,  briefly,  that  the  value  of  his  conversion  depended 
on  his  passionate  need  of  it :  the  remedy  was  com- 
mensurate with  the  evil,  and  both  were  in  himself, 
inborn. 

This  Tolstoi  could  not  see.  And,  failing  to  guess 
that  his  was  a  very  special  and  rare  case,  he  attributed 
his  own  spiritual  drama  to  the  rest  of  mankind.  A 
large  number  of  his  neighbours  were  visibly  discon- 
tented and  unhappy  ;  a  larger  still  he  chose  to  consider 
as  being  so  :  well,  then,  their  discontent  and  their 
unhappiness  were  due  to  the  same  causes  as  his  own. 
They  might,  indeed,  explain  it  by  poverty,  illness, 
cramped  activities,  thwarted  passions,  by  anything  or 
everything  they  chose ;  that,  Tolstoi  assured  them, 
was  but  delusion,  and  the  real  matter  with  them  was 
what  had  been  the  matter  with  himself. 

For  in  all  prophetic  persons  there  is  a  sadly  comic 
side,  reminding  one  of  those  valetudinarians  who  press 


ii2  TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET 

the  pills  or  waters  which  have  relieved  their  liver  or 
their  spleen  on  all  the  people  of  their  neighbourhood 
with  damaged  heart,  brain  or  marrow — nay,  with  poor 
bruised  or  broken  limbs.  Moreover,  in  the  spiritual 
example,  the  recalcitrance  of  supposed  fellow-sufferers, 
their  clinging  to  their  own  diagnosis,  especially  their 
making  light  of  their  own  ills,  is  instantly  set  down 
as  a  sure  sign  that  all  sensation  and  all  judgment  have 
been  perverted  by  the  very  malady  they  refuse  to  own 
up  to.  But,  worst  off  of  any,  those  who,  in  the  face 
of  the  universal,  infallible  and  painless  panacea,  actually 
maintain  that,  for  the  present  at  least,  they  have  no 
ailments  of  any  kind,  that  they  are  (shameless  or 
deluded  wretches  !)  sound  in  mind  and  limb  !  As  to 
those,  well,  all  Tolstoi  can  say  is  that,  just  in  proportion 
to  their  contentment  with  life,  they  are  already  dead 
and  done  for  ;  galvanised  corpses,  set  on  end  to  gibber 
and  to  poison  others  with  their  putrescence. 


IV 


Let  us  continue  our  analysis  of  Tolstoi's  postulates  ; 
which,  at  the  same  time,  is  an  examination  of  the 
modes  of  thought  characteristic  of  the  ascetic  attitude 
and  the  prophetic  temperament. 

"  Every  human  being  lives  in  the  name  of  some 
particular  principle  ;  and  this  principle,  in  whose  name 
he  lives  in  that  given  fashion,  is  no  other  thing  than 
his  religion." 

The  identification  holds  good  only  when  the 
principle  in  question  happens  to  be  of  the  sort  we  all 


TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET  113 

mean  by  "  religious."  If  we  accepted  Tolstoi's  state- 
ment without  this  rider,  which  makes  it  tautological, 
we  should  be  obliged,  like  H.  B.  Brewster  in  his 
"  Ame  Pdienne"  to  identify  a  man's  religion,  his 
God,  with  his  dominant  impulse  or  combination 
of  impulses ;  and  the  most  profane  and  wicked 
lives  might  thus  be  led,  as  Hoffmann  imagines 
the  operatic  Don  Juan's,  in  the  name  of  the  principle, 
let  us  say,  of  Leporello's  catalogues.  The  vital 
principle  of  most  men's  lives  has  been  given  its  right 
name  only  by  Nietzsche  ;  it  is  "  My  Inclination." 
But  it  is  not  of  such  principles  as  these  that  Tolstoi  is 
speaking  ;  and  any  other  principle  of  life,  any  principle 
conscious,  formulated  and  dominating  all  other  im- 
pulses and  habits,  any  principle  which  can  be  called 
a  religion,  exists  only  in  a  minority  of  cases,  at  least 
in  the  sense  of  constant  intellectual  reference  and 
constant  moral  incentive. 


"Life  is  an  aspiration  after  happiness;  the  aspiration 
after  happiness  is  life." 

This  is  psychologically  false.  In  reality  life  is — 
that  is,  exclusively  consists  of — no  more  this  than  any 
other  very  frequent  item  of  consciousness  ;  life  being, 
to  a  large  extent,  absorption  in  various  concerns  or 
interests  to  the  positive  exclusion  of  all  "  aspiration 
after  happiness."  Nor  is  there  any  reason  why  such 
"  aspiration  after  happiness  "  should  be  more  frequent  ; 
for,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  happiness  itself  is  secured, 

8 


H4  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

and  best  secured,  without  any  conscious  straining  after 
it.  Happiness  is  secured,  and  with  it  life's  furtherance 
for  the  individual  and  race,  in  that  manner  which 
Tolstoi,  unable  to  deny  its  existence,  condemns  before- 
hand with  the  absurd  epithet  of  "  animal  "  ;  secured 
by  the  play  of  clashing  or  coordinated  impulses,  which, 
so  far  from  being  more  particularly  animal,  may  happen 
to  be  impulses  of  the  highest  moral  or  aesthetic  or 
constructive  or  intellectual  sort. 

All  pessimism,  all  asceticism,  is  founded  upon  the 
supposition  of  what  Tolstoi  calls  the  "  illusory  thirst 
for  enjoyment."  Now,  however  numerous  the  cases 
where  enjoyment  proves  impossible  or  mischievous, 
the  continued  existence  of  the  human  race  shows 
that,  ninety-nine  times  out  of  a  hundred,  neither  the 
enjoyment  nor  the  thirst  for  it  is  illusory,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  a  genuine  advantage,  making  subsequent 
enjoyment  not  less,  but  more,  possible  by  perfecting 
the  sensibilities.  The  healthy  activity  of  the  whole 
individual,  with  its  inevitable  hierarchy  of  im- 
pulses, both  secures  pleasure  and  iforestalls  cloying, 
and,  by  its  inclusion  of  intellectual  and  sympathetic 
interests,  its  subordination  of  others  to  these,  it 
diminishes  conflict  with  fellow-beings  quite  as 
effectually  as  does  Tolstoi's  Renunciation.  And  here 
let  me  say  that  there  is  surely  something  mean  in 
this  reciprocal  renunciation,  resulting  in  the  cessation 
of  struggle  and  disappointment.  Such  renunciation  is 
often  needful  in  our  imperfect  individual  case  :  our 
eye  gives  us  offence,  and  we  cast  it  from  us>  But  such 
rough-and-ready,  such  wasteful,  destructive  methods 
are  surely  not  admissible  in  a  philosophy  of  life,  in  a 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  115 

counsel  of  perfection  !  The  universal,  as  distinguished 
from  the  individual,  rule  for  greater  happiness  is  not 
self-diminution  but  assimilation,  expansion,  the  non- 
ego  becoming,  in  imagination  and  feelings,  an  integral 
part  of  the  ego.  Asceticism  preaches  voluntary  im- 
poverishment :  my  neighbours  cease  to  steal  because 
I  possess  nothing  ;  I  cease  to  covet,  because  they 
possess  nothing  ;  'tis  Epictetus's  safety  after  the  thieves 
had  carried  away  his  brass  lamp.  But  the  law  of 
human  life  is  barter :  asking  freely  and  giving  fully  ; 
mutual  enriching  through  each  other's  superfluity. 
Asceticism  refuses  to  admit  this  law  ;  for  all  asceticism 
moves  in  the  logical  circle  of  pain  as  cause  and  effect. 


VI 


"  Men,  like  all  other  living  creatures,  are  forced  by 
the  conditions  of  life  to  live  forever  at  one  another's 
expense,  devouring  one  another  literally  or  meta- 
phorically. And  man,  in  so  far  as  gifted  with  reason, 
cannot  blink  the  fact  that  every  material  advantage  is 
obtained  by  one  creature  only  at  the  expense  of  some 
other  creature." 

A  series  of  quite  gratuitous  biological  and  eco- 
nomical assumptions,  which  are  made  more  intelligible 
by  a  statement  in  another  place  that  "  the  workman 
who  wears  out  his  body  and  hastens  his  death  is  giving 
that  body  as  food  to  others." 

Now,  in  all  these  premises,  Tolstoi  omits  one  half  of 
the  fact — namely,  that,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  a 
human  being,  while  giving  himself,  gets,  or  has  got, 


n6  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

something  from  others.  Taking  by  no  means  implies 
stealing,  nor  is  benefiting  by  one  s  fellows  the  same  thing 
as  preying  on  them.  The  workman  is  not  breaking 
down  his  health  and  hastening  his  death  any  faster 
while  working  for  others  than  while  working  for  him- 
self, except  from  occasional  reasons  quite  independent 
of  whom  the  work  is  to  benefit  most.  He  is  not 
breaking  down  his  health  or  hastening  his  own  death 
more  than  if  he  were  committing  excesses  of  other 
kinds  for  his  own  sole  satisfaction  ;  and,  except  through 
the  accidental  or  incidental  misarrangement  of  the  world, 
he  is  not  breaking  down  his  health  or  hastening  on  death 
at  ally  but  rather  the  reverse.  The  detriment  to  the 
individual  is  due  to  excess  as  regards  himself,  not  in 
the  least  to  profitableness  to  others.  The  increase  of 
the  world's  material  and  spiritual  wealth  depends  upon 
activity  ;  but  activity,  when  not  excessive,  is  an 
integration,  not  a  disintegration,  of  individual  life. 
The  world  is  carried  on  upon  the  principle  of  barter 
and  compensation  ;  and,  even  in  such  low  forms  of 
life  as  those  where  animals  or  savages  actually 
prey  upon  each  other,  the  one  who  feeds  upon 
his  victim  to-day  is  bound  to  be  fed  upon,  as  an 
individual  or  a  class,  to-morrow  :  the  lion  ends  off  as 
the  sustenance  of  vultures,  jackals  and  insects.  But 
Tolstoi,  for  reasons  we  shall  presently  grasp  and  can 
already  guess  at,  chooses  to  consider  that  all  profiting 
by  the  existence  of  others  represents  an  unwilling  or  a 
voluntary  sacrifice.  When  it  is  voluntary,  he  calls  it 
love  ;  and  here  again  comes  a  gratuitous  assumption. 
Let  us  look  at  this  question  of  Love  and  of  Sacrifice, 
for  it  is  important  and  one  upon  which  ordinary 


TOLSTOI  AS  PROPHET  117 

thought  (though  luckily  not  e very-day  practice  !)  is  in 
considerable  confusion.  Alongside  of  the  sentence 
about  the  workman  destroying  himself  for  the  benefit 
of  others,  is  another  example  of  what  Tolstoi  chooses 
to  consider  as  self-sacrifice  :  the  mother  suckling  her 
baby.  He  could  not  have  come  by  a  better  refutation 
of  his  own  theory  ;  for  it  is  plain  that  the  mother  is 
giving  life  to  her  child,  but  it  is  also  plain  that  her 
bodily  health  and  her  happiness  gain  by  this  supposed 
sacrifice,  which  is,  in  reality,  an  organic  advantage. 
From  such  an  example,  however,  Tolstoi  concludes 
that  "  love  is  really  worthy  of  that  name  only  when  it 
is  the  sacrifice  of  self."  In  one  sense,  this  is  quite 
undeniable  ;  but  that  sense  is  not  Tolstoi's.  For 
love  is  preference ;  and  love  leads  to  self-sacrifice,  that 
is  to  say,  to  sacrifice  of  greater  or  smaller  advan- 
tages— nay,  even  of  health,  power  or  life — simply 
because  all  preference  of  one  particular  thing  or  group 
of  things  leads  to  sacrifice  of  other  things  or  groups  of 
things,  whether  that  preference  be  socially  beneficial 
(which  we  call  "  unselfish ")  or  socially  detrimental 
(which  we  call  "  selfish "),  whether  it  happen  to 
be  duty,  ambition,  hatred,  vanity,  lust ;  whether 
it  be  the  love  of  Cordelia  or  the  love  of  Francesca  ; 
though,  of  course,  the  measure  of  every  preference 
(since  -preference  implies  alternative)  is  not  the  measure 
more  especially  of  love,  and  still  less  is  it  love's 
chief  characteristic.  The  characteristic,  the  typical, 
fact  of  love  must  be  sought  for  in  that  from  which  the 
highest  love  has,  by  analogy,  borrowed  its  name,  and 
perhaps,  very  literally,  taken  its  origin  :  the  union  of 
two  creatures  who  take  joy  in  producing  a  third.  The 


u8  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

analogous  process  takes  place  in  the  spiritual  domain  : 
we  give  our  thought,  our  fancy,  our  will,  in  union  with 
the  external  world  or  with  the  will,  the  thought  or 
fancy  of  others  ;  and  in  so  doing  create  new  forms,  new 
ideas,  new  modes  of  feeling,  nay,  new  selves. 

But  at  the  bottom  of  the  Tolstoian  conception  of 
love  (which  is  only  the  usual  ascetic  one)  is  the 
old,  savage  notion  of  sacrifice  :  of  a  universe  so  evil 
that  all  happiness  must  be  discounted  in  misery — 
"  I  did  but  taste  a  little  honey  with  the  end  of  the 
rod  that  was  in  mine  hand,  and,  lo,  I  must  die  !  " 
The  implacable  gods,  the  atrocious  Cosmos,  the 
Ogre  Fee-Faw-Fum  at  the  top  of  every  Bean 
Stalk,  insist  on  increasing  suffering  through  every 
apparent  alleviation  or  apparent  enjoyment.  It  is 
worth  while,  especially  in  the  face  of  a  thinker 
like  Tolstoi,  to  disentangle  the  notion  of  giving  from 
the  notion  of  giving  up  ;  to  separate  the  notion  of 
renunciation,  as  a  choice  between  two  positive  or 
negative  desiderata,  from  the  notion  of  renunciation,  as 
mere  refusal  of  good  and  acceptance  of  evil.  The 
really  fruitful  act  of  giving  oneself,  one's  strength, 
attention,  thought  or  feeling,  is  not  a  loss,  but  the 
fulfilling  of  an  organic  need  as  essential  as  that  of 
material  or  spiritual  assimilation  ;  it  is,  in  fact,  the 
inevitable  sequel  of  real  assimilation.  If  the  sacrifice 
of  something  is  often  implied  in  this,  it  is  merely  the 
sacrifice  by  alternative,  the  preference  of  one  need  or 
desire  or  pleasure  over  another.  Such  preference  as 
this  is  a  principle  of  order  in  the  moral  realm  :  the 
fulness  of  life  means,  ipso  facto,  the  constant  checking 
of  the  less  important  by  the  more  important ;  it  means 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  119 

moderation  because  it  means  alternative,  selection, 
subordination  and  hierarchy  of  the  impulses  in  which 
life  consists.  The  vanity  of  the  pursuit  of  pleasure, 
of  which  Tolstoi,  like  every  moralist,  makes  (and 
rightly,  perhaps)  so  much  capital,  results  from  the 
absence  of  such  a  complex  hierarchy  of  impulse  :  the 
larger  part  of  the  pleasure-seeker  is  sacrificed  to  a 
momentary  desire,  and  that  omitted  bulk  of  his  nature 
either  upsets  the  satisfaction  aimed  at,  or  leaves  the 
unruly  desire  to  languish  in  isolation. 

But  Tolstoi,  like  all  ascetics,  seeks  his  remedy  not 
in  moderation,  not  in  the  development  of  other 
impulses,  not  in  fact  in  the  enriching  of  the  individual 
life,  but  in  its  impoverishment.  Moral  Good  is, 
according  to  him,  that  condition  where  man  pursues 
nothing  for  its  own  sake  or  his  own  ends,  and  nothing 
for  the  interest  and  pleasure  of  the  pursuit  ;  but  only 
for  the  sake  of  another  human  being,  or  of  a  vague 
sense  of  duty  personified  as  God.  Tolstoi's  ideal 
of  life  is,  like  his  notion  of  love,  an  ideal  of  diminu- 
tion, of  sacrifice  ;  and  it  seems  likely  that,  even  as 
in  the  ritual  of  primeval  man,  the  ascetic  conception 
of  sacrifice  as  such,  of  sacrifice  as  loss,  impoverishment, 
mutilation,  is  very  closely  connected  with  the  fear 
of  death  ;  sacrifice  being,  however  inexplicitly,  a 
commutation,  a  partial,  symbolical  or  vicarious  death, 
instead  of  a  total  and  positive  one. 

VII 

In  the  case  of  Tolstoi,  there  is  the  repeated  and 
unqualified  expression  of  the  constant  thought,  the 


120  TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET 

constant  fear,  of  Death.  Already,  in  his  pseudo- 
autobiography,  we  find  the  following  funeral  oration 
on  the  old  housekeeper  Natalia  Savichna  : 

"  She  accomplished  the  best  and  greatest  act  of  the 
life  of  this  world  :  dying  without  regret  and  without 
fear." 

Now,  this  fear,  whose  absence  thus  seems  a  rare 
form  of  holiness,  is,  in  a  sense,  a  misconception,  a  mis- 
conception revealing  the  fundamental  complexion  of 
all  asceticism.  Let  us  examine  it.  Life  and  Death 
form  together  one  of  those  false  antitheses  which  have 
been  pointed  out  by  that  subtle  analyst,  Gabriel 
Tarde.  Life  and  Death  are  opposed  in  position ; 
but  not,  so  to  speak,  in  the  ground  which  they  cover 
or  the  facts  they  respectively  include.  Because  what 
is  alive  cannot  also  be  dead,  and  what  is  dead  cannot 
also  be  alive  ^  we  have,  in  our  slovenly  fashion,  grown 
accustomed  to  think  of  the  fact  of  being  alive  and 
the  fact  of  being  dead  as  of  equal  importance,  intensity 
and  extension.  We  overlook  the  real  antithesis,  which 
is  between  death  and  birth  ^  the  two  -points  without  magni- 
tude between  which  extends  life.  Moreover,  we  have 
confused  death  with  the  process  of  dying,  often 
accompanied  by  illness  or  preceded  by  decay,  which 
is  a  portion,  sometimes  a  considerable  portion,  of  the 
processes  of  life.  Nor  is  this  all.  The  immense 
part  played  in  our  life  by  the  death  of  others  gives 
the  notion  of  dying  a  frightful  duration  in  our  con- 
sciousness, and  makes  us  think,  by  analogy,  that  our 
own  death  also  is  a  wide  blot  or  oil  spot  in  our  life. 
Hence  death,  which,  being  the  limit  of  life,  exists 
in  reality  outside  it,  becomes,  so  far  as  it  is  thought 


TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET  121 

about  and  feared,  a  most  important  and  terrible  part 
of  life. 

Life  is  consciousness  ;  and,  except  in  consciousness, 
death  is  nothing  ;  it  becomes,  in  consciousness,  griet 
or  terror.  But  grief  and  terror  are  realities.  Of 
course  ;  since  it  is  thanks  to  them  that  death,  or  rather 
the  notion  of  death,  has  come  to  poison  so  much  of 
life.  Heaven  forbid  I  should  argue  that  either 
philosophy  or  religion  can  ever  abolish  grief  or  fear, 
abolish  the  agony  of  departing,  the  agony  of  being 
left  behind.  Loss  is  loss,  and  parting  is  parting,  a 
fact,  a  horror,  which  nothing  can  efface.  But  let  us 
not  add  to  these  the  dread  either  of  life  or  of  death, 
deeply,  indissolubly  entangled  as  they  become.  And 
if  philosophy  represent  any  higher  truth,  and  religion 
any  higher  utility,  let  them  strive  to  diminish 
this  hideous  tangle,  to  hold  our  thoughts  and 
feelings  asunder ;  make  us  see  things  as  they  are, 
and  make  them,  so  far  as  our  attitude  toward  them 
goes,  a  little  more  what  they  should  be.  Life,  our 
own  and  that  of  our  beloved,  is  good  in  proportion 
as  it  is  safe  and  complete,  as  it  is  untouched  by  the 
chance,  the  fact,  but  worst  of  all,  the  fear,  of  death. 
And  all  healthy  life  tends  to  cast  forth  from  itself  the 
vain  and  paralysing  thought  of  its  own  end. 


VIII 


We  have  seen  that  the  prophetic  temper  is  charac- 
terised by  a  tendency  to  mono-ideism,  and  that  mono- 
ideism  invariably  tends  to  jealousy  of  all  that  it 


122  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

excludes.  One  of  Tolstoi's  most  characteristic  pieces 
of  such  mono-ideistic  jealousy,  is  his  elaborate  cata- 
logue of  sinful  indulgences  ;  of  what,  especially,  he 
puts  under  the  rubric  "  intoxication,"  including  therein, 
as  venial  or  mortal  sin,  the  intoxication  not  merely 
by  wine,  tobacco  or  fleshly  love,  but  by  art,  literature, 
"  gestures  and  sounds,"  and  even  bicycling.  The 
exaggeration  is  so  gross  that  one  fails  at  first  to 
conceive  how  it  could  come  about  in  a  mind  as 
originally  excellent,  and  a  life  as  many-sided,  as 
Tolstoi's.  But  the  explanation,  furnished  by  com- 
parison with  the  raptures  of  earlier  mystics,  appears 
to  be  that  the  ascetic  has  his  own  form  of  intoxication. 
Here  is  Tolstoi's  account  of  his  state  of  beatitude 
after  his  conversion  has  been  consummated  : 

"  All  that  seems  evil  to  me  does  so  merely  because 
I  believe  in  myself  and  not  in  God  ;  and  as,  from 
this  life  where  it  is  so  easy  to  do  His  will,  since  His  will 
is  mine,  I  can  fall  nowhere  except  into  Him,  what  I 
possess  is  complete  joy  and  good.  And  all  I  could 
write  would  fail  to  express  what  I  feel" 

Let  us  consider  these  seemingly  simple  statements. 
It  is  so  easy  for  Tolstoi  to  do  God's  will  !  God's 
will  is,  after  all,  only  Tolstoi's  ;  Tolstoi  can  fall  only  into 
God  !  Is  this  presumptuous  certainty  of  righteousness, 
this  identification  of  the  individual  impulse  and  the 
moral  law,  this  unmixed  and  ineffable  joy,  anything 
save  an  intoxication  of  a  more  insidious,  but  scarcely 
less  unwholesome,  kind  ?  Taking  in  the  full  meaning 
of  such  words  as  these,  one  wonders  whether  there 
will  ever  arise  -a  new  habit  of  spiritual  cleanness,  of 
intellectual  chastity,  making  men  question  and  reject 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  123 

emotional  self-indulgence  like  this,  which  sullies  the 
reason  and  sterilises  the  will.  One  doubts  it.  For, 
from  century  to  century,  mankind  may  be  watched 
yielding,  even  as  to  lower  kinds  of  self-indulgence, 
to  the  subtle  and  high-flown  temptation  of  mysticism. 
This  temptation  consists  in  attributing  to  an  emotional 
state  of  our  own  (the  state  of  Nietzsche's  Zarathustra, 
as  much  as  the  state  of  Kipling's  poor  old  Lama)  the 
name  and  the  importance  of  a  generalised  objective 
fact  ;  nay,  of  the  greatest  and  most  solemn  of  facts 
which  man  has  thus  generalised  :  the  Will  of  God, 
the  Nature  of  Things. 

The  very  recurrence  of  such  a  process  of  spiritual 
intoxication  implies,  it  may  be  said,  a  recurrent  need 
of  it.  Yes  ;  but  a  need  which  results  from  other  needs 
being  neglected.  Between  the  cravings  which  produce 
science,  art,  laws — nay,  food  and  progeny — and  the 
mystical  craving  such  as  this  of  Tolstoi  there  is  a 
fundamental  difference  :  they  are  fruitful,  and  it  is 
barren. 

And  this  word  "  barren  "  suggests  another  of  the 
drawbacks  of  asceticism.  In  its  exclusiveness,  its 
mono-ideism,  its  readiness  to  condemn  all  save  itself, 
asceticism  tends  to  waste  much  of  the  moral  resources 
(so  cruelly  needed !)  of  ordinary  mortals,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  to  get  its  moral  gifts  rejected  by 
those  who  require  them  most ;  its  teaching  is  shelved 
as  dead  letter,  or,  at  best,  counsel  of  perfection. 

Renounce  the  world,  preaches  Tolstoi ;  despise, 
cease  to  relish,  such  of  the  world's  work,  of  the  body's 
functions,  as  cannot  be  relinquished ;  let  nothing 
touch  you  for  its  own  sake  or  your  own  ;  eradicate 


i24  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

self  from  your  thoughts  and  feelings,  and  replace 
it  by  your  neighbour,  by  mankind,  by  that  impersonal 
personification  of  ideals  which  is  Tolstoi's  notion  of 
God. 

"  If  such  be  saintliness,  chivalrousness,  sentiment," 
answers  the  rest  of  mankind  silently  to  itself,  "  by 
all  means  keep  it  on  a  shelf  out  of  the  way  of  ordinary 
life.  Truthfulness,  justice,  chastity,  mercy,  are  clearly 
quite  unsuitable  to  the  increase  of  wealth  and  the 
rearing  of  families ;  and  is  it  not  the  saints  and 
prophets,  Tolstoi  for  instance,  who  tell  us  so  ? " 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  to  what  save  daily  life 
can  ideals,  sentiment,  saintliness,  be  profitably  applied  ? 
Truthfulness,  honesty,  justice,  chastity,  mercy,  are 
nothing  but  correctives  of  this  world's  ways ;  and 
it  is  only  as  such  correctives  that,  save  for  the 
aesthetic  pleasure  of  a  divinity,  they  can  ever  be  wanted. 
Unworldliness  must  be  cultivated  because  our  interests 
are  legitimately  worldly. 

But  holiness  and  heroism,  precious  because  they  are 
useful,  have  been  considered  as  precious  apart  from 
use.  Saints  and  heroes  have  been  cultivated  like  rare 
and  wonderful  flowers,  incapable  of  ever  turning  into 
fruit  for  food  and  seed.  And,  as  a  result  of  such 
isolation  and  sterility,  mankind  has  come  to  be  divided 
— as  we  see  it  in  Buddhism,  in  Christian  monasticism 
and  less  crassly  elsewhere — into  the  church  and  the 
world  :  those  who  accept  life  and  sin,  and  those  who 
kill  the  body,  or  all  the  body  stands  for,  in  order  to 
perfect  the  soul.  Like  every  other  ascetic,  Tolstoi, 
in  preaching  his  doctrine  of  renunciation,  is  uncon- 
sciously giving  in  to  the  vicious  automatism  which 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  125 

sunders  the  natural  man  from  the  saint,  and  which 
discourages  all  application  of  higher  feelings  to 
ordinary  existence  on  the  score  that  ordinary  existence 
can  never  be  composed  of  higher  feelings  only.  And 
in  so  far  Tolstoi  merely  increases  the  modern  tendency 
to  question  the  efficacy  of  all  moral  teaching,  to  doubt 
the  wholesomeness  of  sentiment  and  to  consider  ideals 
of  conduct  either  as  a  mere  symptom,  an  epiphenomenon^ 
a  fly  on  the  axletree  of  progress,  or  (and  human  illogi- 
calness  reconciles  both  indictments)  as  a  mischievous 
interference  with  the  automatic  ways  of  natural  selec- 
tion. It  would  instead  be  more  philosophical  to 
consider  the  continued  recurrence  of  such  ascetic 
or  idealising  tendencies  as  a  proof  of  their  utility, 
despite  all  drawbacks,  in  helping  on  the  practical 
existence  of  mankind.  But  ascetics  have  treated  their 
especial  soul-medicine  or  soul-food  as  the  one  panacea ; 
and  mankind  (as  prone  to  exaggeration  as  the  prophets 
themselves)  has  developed  a  tendency  to  consider 
the  dealers  in  panaceas  as  quacks  or  the  victims  of 
quacks. 

IX 

The  foregoing  notes  have  attempted  to  set  forth 
some  of  the  chief  peculiarities  of  the  ascetic  view  of 
life,  and  of  the  prophetic  temperament,  as  we  may 
study  them  united  in  the  person  of  Tolstoi.  We  have 
taken  stock  of  the  pessimistic  basis  of  asceticism, 
its  rejection  of  moderation,  equilibrium  of  function, 
and  such  moral  improvements  as  rest  upon  them,  in 
opposition  to  wholesale  renunciation  ;  its  passion  for 


126  TOLSTOI  AS   PROPHET 

sacrifice  and  its  preoccupation  with  death  ;  finally, 
its  tendency  to  a  divorce  between  spirituality  and 
life.  In  a  similar  manner,  we  have  had  occasion  to 
verify  the  isolated  and  one-sided  attitude  of  the  born 
prophet ;  his  attribution  of  his  own  moods  and  needs 
to  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  his  jealousy  of,  nay, 
hostility  towards,  every  other  mode  of  being ;  his 
incapacity  for  assimilating  the  ideas  of  others,  for 
meeting  them  half-way  and,  of  course,  for  feeling  any 
correction  or  check  to  his  own  notions  ;  briefly,  his 
mono-ideism,  and  his  mixture  (odd,  but  so  explicable) 
of  complete  self-belief  and  utter  scepticism  of  received 
opinion. 

And,  having  set  these  studies  so  far  before  the 
reader,  I  can  forestall  his  question,  and  shall  endeavour 
to  answer  it :  as  I  have  had  to  answer  it  for  myself 
in  the  course  of  my  reading  of  Tolstoi,  to  account 
for  our  instinctive  sympathy  with  the  seemingly  use- 
less teachings  of  asceticism. 

This  usefulness,  these  uses,  result  from  the  same 
peculiarities  as  the  faults  and  the  drawbacks.  Isolation 
and  mono-ideism  give  the  ascetic  and  the  prophet  an 
extraordinary  freedom  of  view,  wherever  his  own 
definite  attitude  and  limited  idea  are  not  concerned. 
Unconscious  of  those  sympathising  and  imitative  im- 
pulses which  compact  other  individuals  with  their 
fellows  ;  untouched  by  any  of  the  temptations  which 
make  others  blink  and  compromise  ;  inattentive  to 
any  other  man's  views  and,  therefore,  perfectly 
sceptical  towards  them  ;  and  harassed,  moreover, 
through  and  through,  by  organic  dissatisfaction  and 
unrest,  this  thinker,  alone  with  his  own  thoughts  and 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  127 

feelings  (his  Eagle  and  his  Serpent,  like  Nietzsche's 
Zarathustra)  is  the  most  ruthless  of  critics  and  de- 
stroyers. Every  ascetic  is,  in  essence,  an  anarchist 
and  a  nihilist,  a  "  sayer  of  *  No  '  "  to  the  accepted  life 
of  the  world — in  the  words  (more  significant  than  he, 
perhaps,  knew)  of  James  Hinton,  a  "  Law  Breaker  "  ; 
since  the  only  law  he  believes  in  is  the  law  of  his  own 
exceptional  and  isolated  way  of  being.  Hence  he 
sees,  as  no  laughing  sceptic  ever  can,  through  every 
exaggeration,  every  "  vital  lie "  save  his  own.  The 
dominant  and  recurrent  thought  of  all  ascetics,  from 
Buddhism  and  Ecclesiastes,  through  Stoicism  and 
Christian  Mysticism  to  the  smallest  modern  revivalist, 
is  vanity — the  emptiness,  non-existence,  of  everything 
save  their  own  narrow  wishes,  needs  and  habits.  Now, 
this  attitude  of  mind  corresponds  to  a  great  deal  that 
really  exists  :  in  the  happy-go-lucky,  lazy,  yet  hurried, 
processes  of  life,  there  is  quite  an  enormous  amount 
which  is  dead  letter,  perfunctory,  wasteful  and  mis- 
chievous ;  results  of  imperfect  evolution,  like  those 
useless  organs,  those  imperfect  adaptations,  which, 
according  to  the  ingenious  paradox  of  Dr.  MetchnikofF, 
account  for  all  disease,  all  vice  and  suffering,  but  which 
an  instinct  of  social  safety  or  individual  laziness  goes 
on  admiring,  as  the  Bridgewater  writers  admired  the 
"  harmonious  designs  of  Nature."  On  to  all  such 
perfunctory,  dead  letter,  all  such  lying  things,  all 
such  imperfect  adaptations  and  mischievous  survivals, 
the  ascetic,  the  prophet,  the  marvellous  anarchist, 
Tolstoi,  directs  his  ruthless  clear-sightedness.  We 
all  know  his  chapters  on  luxury,  on  the  pseudo-work 
of  the  so-called  intellectual  classes,  on  the  pseudo- 


128  TOLSTOI  AS  PROPHET 

morality  of  official  religion,  on  so  many  of  the  idle 
activities  which  give  us  our  daily  bread  or  our  daily 
ration  of  self-satisfaction.  His  immense  and  weari- 
some volume  on  art  remains  as  a  most  useful  memento 
vivere  or  memento  morl  to  all  of  us  who  talk  glibly 
of  the  holiness  of  beauty  and  its  social  mission.  "  The 
Kreutzer  Sonata  "  probably  aroused  universal  hostility 
less  by  its  morbid  and  unchaste  (monkish  !)  kind  of 
chastity,  than  by  its  terribly  true  criticism  of  so  much 
corruption  and  enervation  hidden  secure  in  the  sacred 
mysteries  of  marriage  and  family  life.  And  the 
writings  on  War  are  but  the  more  moving  and  more 
explicit  development  of  the  remark  of  Tarde's,  that, 
if  the  Past  had  not  left  us  engines  and  institutions 
for  warfare,  the  reciprocal  destruction  of  national  life 
and  wealth  would  certainly  never  have  originated  in 
times  as  comparatively  rational  as  ours.  These  and 
similar  attacks  on  various  forms  of  our  smug  moral 
callousness  or  vainglorious  moral  barbarism,  are  summed 
up  in  a  thought  which  recurs  throughout  Tolstoi's 
works,  beginning  with  his  great  novels  : 

"  All  this  comes  about,  thanks  solely  to  that  social 
and  administrative  machinery  whose  business  it  is  to 
subdivide  the  responsibility  for  evil  done,  in  such 
fashion  that  no  one  should  feel  to  what  extent  these 
acts  are  contrary  to  his  nature.  .  .  .  It  is  sufficient  if 
a  man  free  himself  for  an  instant  from  this  tangled  net, 
in  order  to  see  the  things  which  are  contrary  to  his 
nature" 

That  is  exactly  what  Tolstoi  does  for  us.  His 
unsociable  and  sceptical  temper,  his  constitutional  fault- 
finding, allow  him  to  see,  and  to  show  us,  one  of  the 


TOLSTOI  AS  PROPHET  129 

chief  drawbacks  (for  every  moral  machinery,  every 
human  or  cosmic  arrangement  has  its  drawback)  of 
that  normal  automatic  living  from  impulse  to  impulse, 
or,  if  you  choose,  from  hand  to  mouth,  which  secures 
the  continuance  and  improvement  of  the  race,  and,  on 
the  whole,  the  tolerable  happiness  of  the  individual. 
The  question  "  Why  ?  "  "  To  what  purpose  ?  "  which 
becomes,  in  the  case  of  some  of  Tolstoi's  heroes  and 
in  his  own,  misery  and  paralysis  when  applied  to  the 
totality  of  existence  itself,  is  salutary  when  we  apply  it 
every  now  and  then  to  the  detail  of  life.  For  it  is 
then  no  longer  :  "  What  is  the  use  of  my  being  alive  ?  " 
but  the  wholly  different  query  :  "  Why,  being  alive, 
being  what  I  am  and  wishing  in  a  given  way,  am  I 
nevertheless  acting  in  this  other  way,  which  is  incon- 
sistent with  my  general  life,  personality  and  wishes  ?  " 

Yes  ;  there  is  need  of  such  occasional  scattering  ot 
our  best-established  habits  and  most  necessary  shams 
and  shibboleths.  Nietzsche  is  right  in  asking  for  a 
constant  "  revaluing  of  all  standards  of  value."  Only — 
what  Nietzsche  did  not  guess,  and  the  world  does  not 
recognise — such  has  been  the  mission  not  of  Epicureans 
and  Cynics  (falling  in,  as  they  do,  with  everyday 
habits),  but  of  the  far  more  ruthless,  because  more 
mono-ideistic  and  more  unpractical,  destructiveness  of 
the  prophets  of  asceticism. 

Moreover,  apart  from  its  constant  criticism  of  moral 
routine  and  its  indefatigable  exposure  of  perfunctori- 
ness  and  hypocrisy,  apart  from  its  negative  merit  in 
demolishing  so  many  cherished  vital  lies,  and  making 
the  individual  soul  stand  without  shelter  from  the 
lightnings  and  the  whirlwinds  of  the  spiritual  heavens  ; 

9 


130  TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET 

apart  from  its  great  functions  of  destruction  (bringing, 
in  Christ's  words,  "  not  peace,  but  a  sword  "),  all  pro- 
gress owes  a  deep  debt  to  asceticism  of  every  denomi- 
nation. For  asceticism  has  given  success  to  unworldli- 
ness,  and  made  modesty  and  scrupulousness  illustrious. 
The  adoration  of  the  saint,  the  triumphant  enshrining 
of  his  poor  bones,  has  been  a  salutary  practice  ;  since, 
even  if  that  saint's  virtues  were  mistaken,  it  was  the 
desire  for  virtue,  for  acceptableness  in  God's  eyes, 
which  made  him  glorious  in  the  eyes  of  men.  It  has 
been  a  help  to  progress  that  sanctity  could  compensate 
for  poverty  and  weakness — nay,  that  poverty  and 
weakness  should  have  their  disgrace  removed ;  and 
more  particularly  in  times  when  poverty  was  as  often 
the  result  of  one's  neighbour's  unscrupulousness  as  of 
one's  own  lack  of  initiative  ;  and  weakness  was  better 
for  others  than  being  a  ruffian. 

The  school  which  has  arisen  in  violent  antagonism 
to  ascetic  self-denial,  that  of  Nietzsche  and  the  "  Will 
to  Power,"  bred,  as  it  is,  in  times  of  comparative 
liberty  and  safety  for  the  individual,  has  overlooked 
the  fact  that,  in  the  past,  a  handful  of  stupid  roughs, 
or  the  caprice  of  a  delirious  crowned  degenerate,  could 
in  ten  minutes  destroy  the  results  of  years  and  years 
of  industry,  ingenuity,  self-command,  in  fact,  of  every 
combination  of  intellectual,  moral  and  physical  effi- 
ciency. In  such  a  past, — and  it  is  still  at  our  door 
(I  write  within  a  week  of  the  suppression  of  the 
St.  Petersburg  rising) — the  saint  is  the  necessary 
corrective,  in  mankind's  judgment,  for  the  atrocious 
success  of  the  violent  man  or  the  intriguer.  And,  so 
long  as  we  continue  abetting  success  which  is  obtained 


TOLSTOI   AS   PROPHET  131 

to  the  detriment  of  others,  so  long  shall  we  require 
the  worship  of  the  saint  as  such.  Asceticism  is  the 
inevitable  outcome,  because  it  is  the  natural  corrective, 
of  moral  callousness.  And,  so  long  as  the  market 
and  the  home  are  no  better  than  they  are,  we  shall 
require  to  retire  now  and  again  into  a  church — built, 
if  not  of  stone,  then  of  reverent  thoughts — in  com- 
memoration of  some  just,  and  gentle  and  austere  man. 
Nay,  we  shall  require  to  feel  at  times  the  impulse  to 
self-chastisement,  self-abasement  and  self-mutilation,  so 
long  as  our  daily  life  remains  as  thoughtless,  mean, 
grasping  and  bestial  as  it  often  is. 

And  herein  lies  the  secret  of  Tolstoi,  as  of  all 
ascetics  and  prophets  :  of  his  exaggerations,  his  ab- 
surdities, his — let  us  call  them  by  their  rightful  name — 
ravings  ;  and  of  our  listening,  and  feeling  that  we  are 
right  in  listening,  to  them. 

The  destructiveness  of  asceticism  is  blind  and 
excessive  ;  it  behoves  our  spiritual  activity  and  disci- 
pline to  make  use  of  this  dangerous  moral  force,  as  of 
any  of  the  other  forces  of  nature,  bidding  it  work  for 
our  benefit  and  not  to  our  hurt.  But,  even  while  we 
remain  unable  to  direct  it  to  our  purposes,  this  dis- 
ruptive energy  of  asceticism  and  prophecy  is  one  of 
the  necessary  purifiers  of  our  stagnating  souls.  It 
is  good  to  be  asked,  "  To  what  purpose  ?  "  by  a  Tolstoi, 
although  our  answer  may  differ  so  widely  from  the 
one  he  preaches. 


TOLSTOI    ON    ART 


TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

LEO  TOLSTOI'S  recent  volume  on  Art  closes 
significantly  the  series  of  his  arraignments  of 
what  we  have  been  pleased  to  call  civilisation.  Like 
all  his  later  works,  whether  treatise  or  play  or  novel 
or  parable,  this  volume  on  art  shows  Tolstoi  in  his 
character  of  lay  prophet,  with  all  its  powers  and  all 
its  weaknesses.  For  it  would  seem — we  notice  it  in 
two  other  great  lay  prophets,  Carlyle  and  Ruskin — 
that  the  gift  of  seeing  through  the  accepted  falsehoods 
of  the  present,  and  foretelling  the  improbable  realities 
of  the  future,  can  arise  only  in  creatures  too  far 
overpowered  by  their  own  magnificent  nature  to  under- 
stand other  men's  ways  of  being  and  thinking ;  in 
minds  so  bent  upon  how  things  should  be  as  to  lose 
sight  of  how  things  are  and  how  things  came  to  be. 
While  Carlyle,  embodying  his  passionate  instincts  in 
historical  narrative,  was  moderated  at  least  by  his 
knowledge  of  the  past  and  of  the  consequent  origin 
and  necessity  of  the  present  ;  while  Ruskin,  accepting 
the  whole  moral  and  religious  training  of  his  times, 
was  in  so  far  in  touch  with  his  contemporaries  ;  Tolstoi 
has  broken  equally  with  everything,  if  ever  he  had 
really  much  to  break  with.  Destitute  of  all  historic 
sense,  impervious  to  any  form  of  science,  and  accepting 


135 


136  TOLSTOI   ON  ART 

the  Gospel  only  as  the  nominal  text  for  a  religion 
of  his  own  making,  he  has  become  incapable  of  ad- 
mitting more  than  one  side  to  any  question,  more 
than  one  solution  to  any  difficulty,  more  than  one 
factor  in  any  phenomenon.  He  is  destitute  of  all 
sense  of  cause  and  effect,  all  acquiescence  in  necessity, 
and  all  real  trustfulness  in  the  ways  of  the  universe. 
For  him  most  things  are  wrong,  wholly,  utterly  wrong  ; 
their  wrongness  has  never  originated  in  any  right,  and 
never  will  be  transformed  into  right  until — well,  until 
mankind  be  converted  to  Tolstoi's  theory  and  practice. 
Economic  and  domestic  arrangements,  laws,  politics, 
religion,  all  wrong  ;  and  now,  art  also. 

Unreasonableness  like  this  is  contagious,  and  Tolstoi's 
criticisms  have  often  been  dismissed  as  utterly  wrong- 
headed.  But  we  should  not  forego  the  benefits  which 
the  prophetic  gift  can  bring  us,  if  only  we  know  how 
to  extract  them.  We  should  endeavour  to  eliminate 
the  hallucinations  which  usually  accompany  such 
penetrating  moral  insight,  and  to  apply  some  of  this 
vast  spiritual  energy  with  more  discrimination  than 
was  compatible  with  its  violent  and  almost  tragic 
production.  The  use  of  a  genius  like  Tolstoi's  is  to 
show  us  in  what  particulars  human  institutions, 
habits,  and  thoughts  are  morally  wrong  ;  it  is  for  us 
to  find  out  what  his  very  prophet's  onesidedness  pre- 
vents his  doing — the  rational  explanation  of  this 
wrongness. 

With  regard  to  art,  Tolstoi's  opinion  of  its  moral 
wrongness  can  be  analysed  into  two  very  separate  and 
independent  views.  Art,  as  practised  and  conceived 
in  our  times,  is  immoral,  according  to  Tolstoi,  first : 


TOLSTOI  ON   ART  137 

because  it  fails  to  accomplish  its  only  legitimate  mission 
of  directly  increasing  the  instincts  of  justice,  pity,  and 
self-renunciation  ;  and  secondly  :  because  any  mission, 
good  or  bad,  which  it  does  fulfil  is  limited  to  a  very 
small  fraction  of  mankind.  In  other  words,  according 
to  Tolstoi,  art  is  a  useless,  often  a  corrupting,  luxury  ; 
and  a  luxury  of  that  minority  which  already  enjoys 
more  luxuries  than  are  compatible  with  the  material 
welfare  of  the  rest  of  the  world  and  with  its  own 
spiritual  advantage. 

The  two  propositions  must  be  taken  separately  for 
examination  in  the  light  of  certain  sciences  which,  alas, 
Tolstoi  condemns  outright  as  themselves  useless, 
mendacious,  and  corrupting.  Now  this  condemnation 
by  Tolstoi  of  all  science,  this  misconception  of  the 
very  nature  of  science,  will  help  us  to  a  rapid 
understanding  of  one  half  of  his  condemnation  of  art — 
its  condemnation  as  morally  useless.  There  is  not 
enough  justice  or  sympathy,  not  enough  purity, 
endurance,  or  self-renunciation  in  the  world — that 
is  the  gospel  Tolstoi  has  to  preach  ;  and,  with  prophetic 
onesidedness,  he  condemns  everything  which  does 
not  directly  and  obviously  increase  these  virtues.  So 
long  as  it  is  neither  unjust  nor  cruel  nor  rapacious  nor 
impure,  it  matters  nothing  to  Tolstoi  whether  life  be 
varied  or  monotonous,  elastic  and  adaptive  or  narrow 
and  unadaptive,  lucid  or  dull,  enterprising  or  stagnant, 
complete  or  mutilated,  pleasant  or  devoid  of  pleasure  ; 
it  never  occurs  to  him  that  in  the  great  organic  give- 
and-take,  those  very  qualities  which  he  so  exclusively 
desires  depend  for  their  existence  on  the  fulness  and 
energy  of  every  side  of  human  existence.  Tolstoi  wants 


138  TOLSTOI  ON   ART 

virtue,  and  only  virtue,  dominant,  exclusive  ;  and  he 
thinks  that  virtue  can  be  got  independent  of  every- 
thing else,  perfect  and  instantaneous.  Hence  he 
naturally  disdains  mere  intellectual  activity,  and  mis- 
understands the  object  of  all  science. 

"  The  important  and  suitable  object  of  human 
science,"  he  writes  explicitly,  "  ought  not  to  be  the 
learning  of  those  things  which  happen  to  be  interesting  : 
but  the  learning  of  the  manner  in  which  we  should 
direct  our  lives  :  the  learning  of  those  religious,  moral, 
and  social  truths  without  which  all  our  so-called 
knowledge  of  nature  must  be  either  useless  or  fatal." 
Hence,  practically,  no  science ;  for  Tolstoi's  definition 
of  a  moral  or  social  truth  is  not  a  moral  or  social 
fact  or  generalisation,  but  simply  a  precept  for  con- 
duct ;  truth,  in  his  special  vocabulary,  means  no  longer 
the  faithful  presentation  of  what  is,  but  unflinching 
insistence  on  what  ought  to  be.  As  with  science,  so 
with  art. 

"  The  religious  consciousness  of  our  time  consists, 
speaking  generally,  in  the  recognition  that  our 
happiness,  material  and  spiritual,  individual  and 
collective,  momentary  and  permanent,  consists  in  the 
brotherhood  of  all  men,  in  our  union  for  a  life  in 
common  .  .  .  and  those  works  of  art  only  should  be 
esteemed  and  encouraged  which  grow  out  of  the 
religion  of  our  day,  whereas  all  works  of  art  contrary 
to  this  religion  should  be  condemned,  and  all  the  rest 
of  art  treated  with  indifference." 

Like  science,  therefore,  art  is  set  by  Tolstoi  to 
enforce  virtue,  not,  as  he  orders  science,  by  precepts, 
but  by  embodying  and  communicating  such  emotion 


TOLSTOI  ON   ART  139 

as  conduces  directly  to  greater  morality  ;  no  reference 
being  made,  in  this  case  either,  to  the  fact  that  virtue 
cannot  long  exist  save  in  a  many-sided,  energetic,  and 
harmonious  life,  of  which  the  impulse  to  art,  like  the 
impulse  to  science,  is  an  essential  element.  On  these 
principles,  "  art,"  continues  Tolstoi,  "  should  always 
be  valued  according  to  its  contents,"  that  is  to  say, 
according  to  the  definite  moral  example  which  it 
exhibits,  or  the  definite  moral  emotion — chiefly  pity, 
of  course — which  it  awakens.  The  practical  result 
is  the  banishing,  as  no  longer  consonant  with  our 
moral  purposes,  of  nearly  all  the  art  of  former  times, 
including  Antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages  ;  and  the 
absolute  condemnation  of  more  than  two-thirds  of 
all  modern  art,  including  not  merely  Wagner,  Im- 
pressionism, Symbolism,  Pre-Raphaelitism,  but  all 
Tolstoi's  earlier  work — "  Anna  Karenina  "  and  "  War 
and  Peace  " — nearly  all  of  Goethe's,  and,  after  minute 
examination,  even  the  "  Ninth  Symphony."  There 
remain,  besides  the  Gospels,  the  more  obviously 
moralising  works  of  Victor  Hugo  and  of  Dickens, 
<c  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  and  whatever  painting, 
sculpture,  and  music  may  be  discovered  having  a  moral 
purpose  as  definite  and  unmistakable  as  these. 

This  statement  is  crude,  and  Tolstoi's  plea,  judging 
from  it,  would  seem  to  be  mere  fanatical  dogmatism. 
But  this  is  far  from  being  the  case  :  Tolstoi  is  learned 
and  is  subtle,  and  twists  facts  powerfully  to  suit  his 
views.  Tolstoi  has  read,  or  caused  to  be  examined  for 
his  benefit,  almost  everything  that  ever  has  been 
written  on  the  nature  and  aims  of  art  ;  and,  in  a 
chapter  where  profound  lack  of  sympathy  is  thinly 


140  TOLSTOI  ON   ART 

disguised  as  intellectual  impartiality,  he  has  reviewed 
and  dismissed  every  theory  of  art  which  differs  from 
his  own.  The  science  of  aesthetics,  necessarily  de- 
pendent as  it  is  upon  psychology,  sociology,  and 
anthropology,  all  as  yet  imperfect,  is  in  a  backward 
state  ;  and  an  immense  proportion  of  the  "  philosophy 
of  art  "  is  either  pure  metaphysics,  scornful  of  concrete 
fact,  or  mere  polemic  founded  on  the  practice  of  one 
school  or  period.  This  backward  state  of  aesthetics 
has  rendered  it,  from  Plato  to  Spencer,  and  from 
Ruskin  to  Whistler,  the  happy  hunting  ground  of 
every  philosopher  lacking  the  experience  of  art,  and  of 
every  art  connoisseur  lacking,  the  habit  of  philosophy  ; 
and  has  given  Tolstoi  the  immense  advantage  of 
finding  not  merely  a  marvellous  amount  of  foolish 
utterance  to  scoff  at,  but,  what  is  more  to  his  purpose, 
a  mutual  contradiction  between  all  the  main  theories. 
All  philosophers,  Tolstoi  is  able  to  tell  us,  have 
insisted  on  the  extreme  nobility  of  art,  and  a  great 
many  have  dogmatised  about  beauty  being  art's  special 
object ;  but  there  is  not  one  single  intelligible  account 
of  beauty,  and  there  are  three  or  four  conflicting  main 
definitions  of  art ;  a  proof  that,  as  Tolstoi  has  so  often 
proclaimed,  all  science  and  all  philosophy  are  worthless, 
and  that  art  can  have  no  legitimate  object  save  the 
moral  one  which  he  assigns  to  it.  But  it  happens 
that  even  nowadays  the  psychological  and  historical 
treatment  of  aesthetics  is  beginning  to  put  order  and 
lucidity  into  the  subject,  and  to  reconcile  while  it 
explains  the  conflict  in  all  previous  views.  It  is  in 
the  light  of  such  science,  however  much  despised  by 
Tolstoi,  that  we  shall  attempt  to  show  that  art,  like 


TOLSTOI  ON   ART  141 

science  itself,  like  philosophy,  like  every  great  healthy 
human  activity,  has  a  right  to  live  and  a  duty  to  fulfil, 
quite  apart  from  any  help  it  may  contribute  to  the 
enforcement  of  a  moralist's  teachings. 

o 

It  is  necessary  to  premise  that,  like  nearly  every 
other  writer  on  aesthetics,  Tolstoi  has  needlessly 
complicated  the  question  by  considering  literature  as 
the  type  of  all  other  art.  Now  it  is  clear  that  literature, 
although  in  one  capacity  an  art  as  much  as  music  or 
painting,  is  at  the  same  time,  and  in  varying  degree, 
a  mode  of  merely  imparting  opinion  or  stirring  up 
emotion,  the  instrument,  not  merely  of  the  artist, 
but  of  the  thinker,  the  historian,  the  preacher,  and  the 
pleader.  This  being  the  case,  it  is  unfair  to  judge 
the  question  of  art  by  the  whole  practice  of  literature  ; 
it  is  necessary,  on  the  contrary,  so  long  as  we  are 
dealing  with  aesthetics,  to  consider  only  those  sides 
of  literature  in  which  it  resembles  the  other,  more 
purely  artistic,  more  typical  arts.  Putting  literature 
therefore  aside,  on  account  of  the  multiplicity  of  its 
appeals  to  human  interest,  we  shall  find  that,  roughly 
speaking,  while  philosophers  have  given  to  art  one 
of  two  large  functions,  imitation  or  expression — and 
practical  craftsmen  have  inclined  to  judge  of  art  as 
if  its  chief  function  were  either  invention  or  execution, 
newness  of  construction  or  dexterity  of  handling — the 
immense  majority  of  art-loving  mankind,  including 
the  philosophers  and  the  artists  in  their  merely  human 
capacity,  have  accepted  or  rejected,  cherished  or 
neglected,  single  works  of  art,  exactly  in  proportion 
as  these  works  gave  them  the  particular  kind  of 
pleasure  connected  with  the  word  beauty.  The 


142  TOLSTOI    ON   ART 

meaning  of  this  word  beauty  it  is  difficult,  and, 
in  the  present  backward  state  of  aesthetic  science, 
perhaps  impossible,  to  define.  It  implies  a  relation 
between  certain  visible  or  audible  phenomena  (and 
in  literature  certain  still  more  complex  purely  mental 
phenomena)  and  the  spectator  or  listener ;  and  the 
exact  nature  of  these  visible  or  audible  phenomena, 
which  we  objectify  in  the  word  form,  differs  from  art 
to  art,  from  style  to  style,  and  from  individual  work 
to  individual  work,  there  existing  practically  endless 
numbers  of  ways  of  being  beautiful — that  is  to  say, 
of  producing  in  the  human  being  the  very  specific 
emotion  aroused  by  what  we  call  beauty.  What  may 
be  this  common  character  of  all  these  different  so-called 
beautiful  visual  or  audible  forms  or  patterns,  is 
evidently  a  question  of  psychological  and,  in  part,  of 
physiological  science  ;  and,  different  as  are  the  modes 
of  action  of  different  arts  and  different  styles  of  art, 
and  deficient  as  is  at  present  our  analysis  and  obser- 
vation of  the  modes  of  influence  of  any  of  them,  we 
may  yet  affirm  with  confidence  that  the  progress  of 
science  will  one  day  explain  that  particular  relation 
between  certain  visible  and  audible  forms  and  the 
human  being  which  is  brought  about  by  what  we  call 
beauty,  as  a  relation  involving,  whatever  its  particular 
kind,  a  general  momentary  advantage  to  the  vital, 
nervous,  mental,  and  bodily  conditions,  and  accom- 
panied, as  all  beneficent  conscious  phenomena  are, 
by  the  condition  called  pleasure. 

To  recapitulate  :  the  quality  called  beauty,  recognised 
in  the  most  various  kinds  and  styles  of  art,  marks  the 
awakening  of  a  specific  sort  of  pleasure,  at  present 


TOLSTOI  ON   ART  143 

neither   analysable   nor  explicable,  but   which,  like  all 
the    other    varieties    of    pleasure,    can    be    instantly 
identified,  though  not  described,  by  any  one  who  has 
experienced    it.     But   although   it   is  this   quality  of 
beauty ',  this  specific  pleasurable  emotion  connected  with 
the   word    beautiful^    which    practically    decides    the 
eventual    acceptance  or   rejection    of  a    work    of  art, 
yet  the    theories    connecting    art    with    imitation   and 
expression,  with  invention  and  execution,  represent  also 
a   large   and   important    side    of  the   question.     For 
history  and  anthropology  point  clearly  to  the  fact  that 
art  very  rarely  originates  from  a  conscious  desire  for 
beauty,  but  that  it  arises  out  of  the  practical  require- 
ments, material  or  spiritual — building,  weaving,  pottery, 
dress,    war,    and   ritual — of  mankind,   and   out   of  a 
superabundance    of    the    great    primary   instincts    of 
imitation   and    expression,   of  construction,  invention, 
and  manipulation.    These  instincts,  which  are  explicable 
only  as  immediate  reactions  of  the    human  organism 
upon   its  surroundings,  have   been   carried  by   natural 
selection  to  an  intensity  so   considerable  as  often  (in 
the    case    of    children,    for    instance)    to    surpass    all 
practical    requirements,     so    that    they  have  to  vent 
themselves    in    that    gratuitous    exercise    which    has 
suggested  to  Mr.  Spencer  (as  it  had  done  to  Schiller) 
the  notion  that  art  was  the  result  of  special  play  instincts. 
Play  instincts,  as  such,  there  are  probably  none  ;  but 
it   is  certain  that  all  art  has  arisen  from  the  activity 
— whether  utilitarian  or  aimless — of  the  tendencies  to 
imitate,  to  express,  to  invent,  to  construct,  to  manipu- 
late, and  to  perform.     But  what  differentiates  art  from 
the  mere  practical  or  aimless  exercise  of  these  impulses 


144  TOLSTOI  ON  ART 

is  the  fact  that,  in  its  case,  these  impulses  have 
been  controlled  by  that  totally  different  and  specific 
instinct  which  demands  that,  useful  or  useless,  the 
forms  presented  to  the  mind  through  the  eye  and 
the  ear  should  possess  the  absolutely  peculiar  quality 
of  beauty.  That  which  has  caused  the  imitation  of  an 
object  or  the  expression  of  an  emotion  to  be  respected 
after  the  utility  thereof  has  vanished  or  the  impulse  to 
imitate  or  express  has  died  out  ;  that  which  has  caused 
the  shape  of  a  building,  the  pattern  of  a  stuff  or  a 
pot,  the  movements  of  a  dance,  the  picture  of  an 
object,  to  be  desired  for  their  own  sake,  is  the  peculiar 
kind  of  pleasure  which  the  quite  unpractical,  quite  dis- 
interested contemplation  of  the  object  or  pattern  or 
representation  or  game  has  been  able  to  produce  by 
virtue  of  its  beauty.  The  instinct  for  beauty  is  not, 
in  all  probability,  one  of  the  creative  faculties  of  man. 
It  does  not  set  people  working,  it  does  not  drive  them 
to  construct,  to  imitate,  or  to  express,  any  more  than 
the  moral  instinct  sets  people  wishing  and  acting,  or 
the  logical  instinct  sets  them  reasoning.  It  is,  even 
more  typically  than  the  moral  and  logical  instincts,  a 
categorical  imperative ,  which  imperiously  decides  whether 
given  forms  are  to  be  tolerated,  cherished,  or  avoided. 

In  thus  recognising  that  the  instinct  for  beauty  is 
not  a  creative  but  a  regulative  impulse  of  mankind, 
modern  psychology,  so  far  from  diminishing  its 
importance,  increases  it  enormously  and  explains  it. 
For  the  very  fact  that  the  instincts  of  expression  and 
imitation,  of  construction,  invention,  manipulation, 
and  performance,  have  in  all  their  most  practical 
applications  (in  building,  clothing,  fabrics  of  all  sorts, 


TOLSTOI   ON   ART  145 

and  every  kind  of  ritual)  been  so  constantly  interfered 
with,  and  in  their  play  capacity  (save  in  children)  been 
so  utterly  captured,  by  an  instinct  so  merely  regulative 
as  the  instinct  for  beauty,  proves,  to  any  one  accustomed 
to  modern  scientific  thought,  that  this  mysterious, 
unaccountable,  apparently  useless  pleasure  arising  from 
certain  form  relations  which  we  call  beautiful  must 
eventually  be  explained  and  accounted  for  by  some 
deep-seated  vital  utility  to  the  mind  and  the  nervous 
system  of  the  human  race.  Therefore  we  would 
answer,  not  to  Count  Tolstoi,  for  whom  all  scientific 
explanations  are  mere  lumber,  but  to  those  readers 
of  Tolstoi  whom  his  arguments  may  have  shaken,  first : 
that  the  apparent  conflict  in  aesthetic  theory  represents 
only  the  various  factors  of  a  complex  problem  ;  and 
secondly  :  that  the  constant  return  to  the  belief  that 
art's  eventual  aim  is  to  produce  beauty,  and  even  the 
very  mystery  which  at  present  surrounds  this  indefin- 
able and  as  yet  inexplicable  quality,  go  to  prove  that, 
in  a  world  different  from  the  monotonous  ascetic, 
unorganic  world  conceived  by  Tolstoi,  in  a  world  of 
life  the  most  complex,  overflowing  and  organic — not 
merely  negative  moral  virtue,  but  physical  beauty,  as 
much  as  intellectual  lucidity,  is  required,  and,  by  the 
nature  of  things,  will  eternally  be  required  and 
produced. 

But  Tolstoi's  plea  against  art  is  double,  and  we  have 
so  far  disposed,  even  in  our  own  eyes,  of  only  one 
of  its  halves.  Even  if  the  theory  were  right,  the 
practice  would  remain  wrong,  and  could  not  be  set 
right  by  any  amount  of  arguing.  For,  however 
beneficial  the  enjoyment  of  beauty,  the  benefit  must 

10 


146  TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

be  confined  to  the  cases  where  the  beauty  is  actually 
enjoyed  ;  and,  however  desirable  a  function  art  may 
fulfil  in  human  existence,  the  function  is  limited  to  the 
lives  into  which  art  does  actually  enter.  Now  beauty, 
Tolstoi  points  out,  even  supposing  it  to  exist,  requires, 
in  nine-tenths  of  all  art,  a  special  training  before  it  is 
so  much  as  perceived  ;  and  moreover,  art  of  any  kind, 
appreciated  or  not  appreciated,  does  not  (he  says) 
come  near  the  existence  of  the  immense  majority  of 
mankind,  roughly  speaking,  of  all  the  classes  who 
work  with  their  hands.  On  the  one  hand,  there  are 
galleries,  exhibitions,  and  concerts  where  works  or  art 
are  displayed  and  performed  which  can  give  pleasure 
only  after  elaborate  initiation ;  on  the  other  hand,  there 
are  millions  of  human  beings  who  never  come  near  a 
gallery,  an  exhibition,  or  a  concert  room,  because  they 
have  neither  the  money  nor  the  leisure  to  enter  it. 
This  being  the  case — and  Tolstoi  seems  to  us  irrefutably 
right  in  this  matter  so  far  at  least  as  he  is  speaking  of 
actualities,  and  not  of  what  is  abstractly  true  or  possible 
— it  is  mere  nonsense  and  cant  to  talk  of  the  usefulness 
of  art  to  mankind  as  a  whole  ;  and  the  only  sincere 
statement  is  that  of  the  cynical  and  immoral  persons 
who  calmly  admit  that  art  is  one  of  the  many  luxuries 
of  the  rich  and  leisured  minority,  and  is  maintained  for 
their  sole  enjoyment  (according  to  Tolstoi's  economics) 
by  the  labour  of  the  poor  and  overworked  majority. 

In  attempting  to  answer  this  second  plea  against  art, 
we  must  again  premise  that  we  can  do  so  only  with  the 
aid  of  those  psychological  and  historical  sciences  which 
Tolstoi  disdains  like  all  others,  and  in  the  light  more 
particularly  of  that  same  critical  knowledge  of  art 


TOLSTOI   ON   ART  147 

which  he  denounces  as  a  chief  source  of  perversion  in 
these  matters.  Let  us  begin  with  the  question  of  the 
necessity  of  training  before  artistic  beauty  can  be 
enjoyed,  and  with  Tolstoi's  implied  corollary  that 
beauty  which  is  not  spontaneously  recognised  cannot 
really  respond  to  any  deep-seated  or  indeed  genuine 
demand  of  human  nature.  One  of  Tolstoi's  chief 
instances  in  point  is  that  of  the  modern  school  of  im- 
pressionist painters.  He  describes,  without  any  exag- 
geration, the  hopeless  mental  confusion  of  an  educated 
person  on  first  being  introduced  to  a  collection  of 
impressionist  pictures.  We  can  all  of  us  remember 
similar  remarks  on  dozens  of  similar  occasions,  and, 
if  our  memory  is  good,  and  we  do  not  happen  to  have 
been  brought  up  in  impressionist  studios  from  our 
infancy,  we  can  probably  also  remember  having  said  or 
thought  the  very  same  things  ourselves  :  the  objects 
represented  are  in  most  cases  not  recognised,  the 
drawing  and  perspective  seem  utterly  wrong,  and  the 
effects  of  colour  and  light  the  result  of  something  near 
akin  to  lunacy. 

Tolstoi's  description  is  perfectly  accurate,  but  his 
deductions  are  unwarrantable,  for  what  he  has  not  seen 
is  that  impressionist  painters  represent  the  most 
advanced  section  of  a  school  of  painting  which  has 
broken  with  all  past  tradition  and  which  is  avowedly 
seeking  to  represent  effects  of  perspective,  or  colour, 
and  of  light  which  have  never  been  attempted  before, 
and  to  do  so  in  reference  to  subjects — casually  chosen 
pieces  of  landscape,  for  instance — which  have  hitherto 
been  disdained,  and  in  disregard  of  all  the  established 
tenets  of  symmetrical  composition.  Now  the  most 


148  TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

advanced  art  of  any  age,  like  the  most  advanced 
thought  of  any  age,  is  really  not  for  the  period  which 
produces  it,  but  for  the  next,  whether  that  next  come 
within  two  years  or  within  twenty  or  a  hundred  years  ; 
and  the  art  of  a  class,  like  the  mode  of  dress  and  speech 
of  a  class,  takes  time  to  descend  to  the  classes  below. 
From  the  nature  of  things  no  novelty  can  arise  save  in 
a  comparatively  small  circle,  originally  in  the  small 
circle  of  an  artistic  school,  or  even  in  the  mind  of  one 
individual  artist.  We  cannot  feel  the  beauty  of  an 
artistic  form  which  we  do  not  really  see,  any  more 
than  we  can  feel  the  cogency  of  an  argument  we  do 
not  really  follow ;  and  the  act  of  perception  is  not  any 
simpler  or  more  rapid  or  spontaneous  than  the  act  of 
intellectual  apprehension.  We  do  not  see  an  unfamiliar 
pattern,  we  do  not  hear  an  unusual  combination  of 
sounds,  with  the  rapidity  and  completeness  given  by 
habit  and  by  expectation.  The  enjoyment  of  the 
quality  called  beauty  is  the  enjoyment  of  a  certain  set 
of  visible  or  audible  relations,  and  these  relations  are 
by  no  means  taken  in  immediately.  The  emotion  of 
aesthetic  pleasure  can  take  place  only  when  any  given 
kind  of  artistic  form  has  been  assimilated  by  the  mind ; 
and  the  possibility,  the  mode,  of  assimilation  is  handed 
on  by  imitation  from  the  more  prepared  individual 
to  the  less  prepared  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  each 
new  form,  like  each  new  thought,  is  assimilated  in 
proportion  as  it  resembles  an  already  familiar  one. 
Every  new  work  of  art,  nay,  every  form  of  which  a 
whole  work  of  art  consists,  is  different  from  all  its 
predecessors,  at  least  in  its  combinations  ;  it  is  a  new 
individual,  which  we  get  to  know  at  first  by  what  it 


TOLSTOI  ON   ART  149 

has  in  common  with  previous  individuals  of  the  same 
class.  The  new  picture  or  poem  or  song,  which  we 
see  or  read  or  hear  for  the  first  time,  represents  a 
mental,  aesthetic,  emotional  step  made  by  us  ;  it  means 
an  alteration,  great  or  small,  of  attitude,  like  that 
produced  by  a  new  logical  proposition,  even  if  the  new 
picture  or  poem  or  song  be  as  closely  connected  with 
a  previous  one  as  a  new  proposition  of  Euclid  is  with 
earlier  propositions.  To  expect  a  person  totally  un- 
familiar with  all  similar  art  to  comprehend,  to  see,  let 
alone  to  enjoy,  an  impressionist  picture,  is  like  expect- 
ing a  person,  who  is  familiar  with  nothing  beyond  a 
rule-of-three  sum,  to  follow  some  new  problem  of  the 
higher  mathematics. 

Such  facts  and  principles  as  these  have  never  occurred 
to  Tolstoi.  He  has  never  conceived  the  human 
faculties  as  being  in  a  state  of  constant  alteration  and 
evolution  ;  he  does  not  recognise  that  what  we  find 
established  and  apparently  spontaneous  in  the  present 
has  been  brought  about  by  the  adjustments  and  the 
efforts  of  the  past  ;  and  he  mistakes  for  innate  tenden- 
cies what  in  reality  are  the  result  of  long  unconscious 
or  conscious  training.  "  The  majority  of  men,"  he 
says,  ' '  has  always  understood  all  that  we  consider  as 
the  highest  art :  the  book  of  Genesis,  the  parables  of 
the  Gospels,  and  the  various  popular  legends,  stories, 
and  songs."  No  doubt,  the  "majority  of  men"  has 
understood  them  in  those  countries  and  times  in  which 
they  happen  to  have  been  familiar.  But  would  the 
opening  chapters  of  Genesis  be  more  comprehensible 
to  a  person  brought  up  entirely  out  of  touch  with 
Christianity  or  Judaism  than  the  Prologue  in  Heaven 


150  TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

of  "  Faust  "  ?  Would  the  intricate  forms  and  special 
allusions  of  the  north-country  ballad,  of  the  Tuscan 
lyric  or  the  Spanish  song,  be  more  intelligible  to  a 
person  totally  unacquainted  with  anything  of  the  kind 
than  "  Sister  Helen,"  or  a  "  Sonnet  from  the  Portu- 
guese," or  Verlaine's  "  Clair  de  Lune  "  ?  What  Tolstoi 
mistakes  for  a  naturally,  inevitably  intelligible  and  en- 
joyable character  in  art  is  in  reality  an  affinity,  a  resem- 
blance, with  forms  of  art  already  familiar.  We  are  now 
beginning  to  see  in  what  way  all  artistic  enjoyment  can 
require  a  degree  of  previous  training,  and  yet  be,  to  all 
appearance,  absolutely  spontaneous.  For  just  as  a 
capacity  to  appreciate  the  new  grows  insensibly  out  of 
familiarity  with  the  old,  so  also  does  a  new  form  of  art, 
under  normal  conditions,  grow  out  of  an  old  form  by 
a  series  of  alterations  very  gentle  and  easy  to  follow, 
although  their  extremes  may  represent  styles  of  art  as 
utterly  unlike  as  the  music  of  Wagner  and  the  music 
of  Mozart,  or  may  be  as  far  apart  as  the  pointed 
architecture  of  the  thirteenth  century  and  the  round- 
arched  architecture  of  the  fifth,  from  which  it  un- 
doubtedly sprang  ;  a  process  which  we  can  realise  if 
we  remember  that  although  Latin  is  no  longer  intelli- 
gible to  an  uneducated  Frenchman  or  Italian,  yet  there 
could  never  have  been  a  moment  of  non-comprehen- 
sion during  the  centuries  which  evolved  the  modern 
languages  from  the  ancient  one. 

But  mere  gradual  evolution  would  not  be  sufficient 
to  explain  the  insensible  training  which  has  made  the 
appreciation  of  various  artistic  forms  apparently  spon- 
taneous. The  art,  whatever  it  might  be,  was  not  only 
absolutely  continuous,  but  widely  diffused.  We  must 


TOLSTOI   ON   ART  151 

here  remember  what  we  before  pointed  out,  that  the 
desire  for  beauty  is  a  regulative  function,  and  that  it 
imposes  its  preferences  upon  the  expressive  and  imitative 
impulses,  the  activities  of  invention,  construction,  and 
execution  which  mankind  displays  for  practical  purposes 
or  as  a  mere  pastime.  Hence,  in  times  which  are 
normal,  any  artistic  form  is  found — and  all  art-history 
is  there  to  prove  it— not  merely  in  those  very  con- 
spicuous and  developed  branches  which  we  think  of 
more  particularly  as  art^  but  in  every  form  of  cognate 
craft.  The  language  and  the  allusions  employed  by 
even  so  learned  and  artificial  a  poet  as  Dante  were  the 
language  and  allusions  of  the  least  cultivated  of  his 
contemporaries,  to  the  extent  of  making  his  poem  the 
favourite  reading  of  artisans  and  peasants.  The  forms, 
the  modelling,  the  anatomy,  the  essential  ways  of  being 
of  line  and  surface  in  Greek  sculpture  can  be  recognised, 
to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  in  the  commonest  Greek 
pottery,  bronze  work,  cheap  domestic  ornaments,  and 
so  forth  ;  the  very  special  forms,  so  difficult  to  imitate, 
and  even  to  grasp  after  much  study,  of  what  we  call 
Gothic,  appear  in  the  very  humblest  building,  in  every 
chair,  table,  embroidery,  or  piece  of  iron-work  of  the 
later  Middle  Ages  ;  while  the  modulations  and  rhythms, 
and  in  great  part  the  harmonies,  of  every  past  form 
of  music  have  always  been  common  to  the  most  humble 
and  to  the  highest  categories  of  the  art  :  the  lower,  like 
the  more  provincial  branches  of  art,  according  to  the 
law  of  imitation  we  have  before  alluded  to,  being  always 
just  a  little  behind  the  work  of  the  creative  masters  in 
the  highest  branches  and  in  the  greatest  centres.  This 
universal  diffusion  of  a  given  fashion  in  art — fashion 


J52  TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

in  dress  is  perhaps  the  only  modern  representative  of 
this  state  of  things — explains  how  a  whole  population 
could  be,  so  to  speak,  constantly  in  presence  of  any 
given  style  of  art,  and  able  gradually  to  appreciate  its 
variations  without  any  apparent  previous  training. 
The  mediaeval  artisan  was  as  able  to  appreciate  the 
most  far-fetched  and  subtle  of  all  forms  of  art,  the 
Gothic — and  for  the  same  reason — as  the  modern 
Japanese  of  the  lower  class  is  able  to  appreciate  pecu- 
liarities of  perspective,  of  form,  and  of  execution  which 
strike  even  the  educated  European  as  exotic,  and  which 
cannot  be  enjoyed  by  him  without  some  special 
study. 

This,  as  we  have  remarked,  is  the  state  of  affairs  in 
normal  times ;  for  we  must  be  careful  to  underline  this 
qualification.  Tolstoi,  with  his  deficient  historical 
sense,  and  his  tendency  to  believe  in  an  unvarying 
typical  man  (more  or  less  represented  by  the  Russian 
peasant  of  to-day),  has  not  recognised  the  prevalence 
of  this  normal  condition  throughout  the  past,  nor,  of 
course,  the  reasons  through  which,  as  Mr.  Ruskin 
taught  some  forty  years  ago,  this  normal  condition  has 
become  more  and  more  exceptional  in  the  present.  It 
is,  however,  easy  to  understand  why  our  century,  with 
its  quite  unparalleled  rapidity  and  complexity  of  change, 
must  differ  in  this  respect  from  all  others.  As  regards 
the  continuity  of  artistic  development,  there  have  been 
and  still  are  two  notable  causes  of  disturbance  :  the 
opening  up  of  foreign  civilisations  and  the  importation 
of  exotic  kinds  of  art  (like  that  of  Japan),  and  the 
archaeological  revival  of  the  art  of  the  past,  for  instance, 
the  Greek  and  the  Gothic.  From  these  have  resulted 


TOLSTOI   ON  ART  153 

both  an  impulse  of  imitation  and  an  effort  after  novelty, 
the  latter  due  both  to  facility  of  new  combinations  and 
to  resistance  against  foreign  or  historical  influence. 
Now  an  art  which,  like  that  of  Burne-Jones  or  of 
Whistler,  is  half  archaeological  or  half  exotic,  cannot 
possibly  be  appreciated  without  some  degree  of  famili- 
arity with  the  Mediaeval  or  the  Japanese  art  from 
which  it  has  partly  sprung  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
an  art  like  that  of  Manet,  Monnet,  and  Rodin  has 
evidently  been  pushed  into  excessive  novelty  by  a  violent 
revulsion  from  the  officially  accepted  forms  and  methods 
of  the  painting  and  sculpture  of  the  Renaissance  and 
of  Antiquity. 

There  is  in  the  art  of  this  century  a  degree  of  in- 
dividualism, an  amount  of  archaeological  and  exotic 
research,  an  obvious  desire  for  novelty  at  any  price, 
which  renders  it  less  organic,  less  natural,  than  the  art 
of  past  times.  The  result  is  that  its  appreciation  is  no 
longer  attainable  by  the  unconscious  training  which  is 
conferred  by  familiarity  with  previous  art,  and  demands 
special  initiation  through  critical  study.  Among  our 
contemporaries  it  is  a  matter  of  everyday  experience 
to  find  persons  extremely  appreciative  of  Greek  or 
Gothic  art  who  yet,  like  Mr.  Ruskin,  can  see  absolutely 
nothing  in  the  art  of  modern  France  ;  while  there  are 
practical  artists  who  can  see  absolutely  nothing  save 
archaic  quaintness  in  the  art  of  Antiquity  and  of  the 
Renaissance  ;  to  such  an  extent  are  the  perception  and 
enjoyment  of  one  kind  of  form  impeded  by  the  habit 
and  preoccupation  of  another.  Such  being  the  case 
with  the  artistic  classes  themselves,  how  much  more 
must  it  be  the  case  with  the  general  public  !  And  from 


154  TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

this  general  public  we  are  obliged  in  our  century  to 
exclude  completely  the  enormous  majority  of  mankind 
Tolstoi  has  not  exaggerated  matters  in  saying  that 
barely  one  man  in  a  hundred  comes  nowadays  within 
reach  of  art,  appreciated  or  unappreciated.  For  here 
we  find  ourselves  in  presence  of  the  other  and  far 
greater  difference  which  separates  the  aesthetic  conditions 
of  our  century  from  those  of  every  previous  one. 
The  industrial  and  economic  changes  accompanying 
the  development  of  machinery  have  virtually,  as  Mr. 
Ruskin  pointed  out,  put  an  end  for  the  moment  to  all 
that  handicraft  which  formed  the  fringe  of  the  artistic 
activity  of  the  past,  and  which  kept  the  less  favoured 
classes  in  such  contact  with  the  artistic  forms  of  their 
time  and  country  that,  for  instance,  the  pottery  and 
brass-work  of  the  humbler  classes  of  Greece,  and  the 
wood-work  and  textile  fabrics  of  the  poorest  citizens  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  let  alone  every  kind  of  domestic 
architecture,  afforded  sufficient  preparation  for  the 
greatest  art  of  temples  and  cathedrals  :  a  daily,  hourly 
preparation,  embodying  in  many  cases  actual  mechanical 
familiarity.  Nowadays,  on  the  contrary,  objects  of 
utility,  machine-made,  and  no  longer  expressive  of  any 
preferences,  are  either  totally  without  aesthetic  quality, 
or  embody,  in  a  perfunctory  and  imperfect  manner,  the 
superficial  and  changing  aesthetic  fashions  of  a  very 
small  minority.  Nor  is  this  all.  The  extreme  rapidity 
of  scientific  discovery  and  mechanical  invention,  the 
growing  desire  for  technical  education  and  hygienic 
advantage,  the  race  for  material  comfort  and  the 
struggles  for  intellectual  and  social  equality — in  fact, 
the  whole  immense  movement  of  our  times,  both 


TOLSTOI   ON   ART  155 

for  good  and  for  evil — have  steadily  tended  to 
make  art  less  and  less  a  reality  even  in  the  lives  of 
the  leisured  classes,  and  have  resulted  in  virtually 
effacing  all  vestige  of  it  from  the  lives  of  working 
men. 

Art,  therefore,  we  may  concede  to  Tolstoi,  is  in  our 
days  largely  artificial,  often  unwholesome,  always  dif- 
ficult of  appreciation,  and,  above  all,  a  luxury.  Violent 
and  even  fanatical  as  are  Tolstoi's  words  on  this 
subject,  they  hardly  exaggerate  the  present  wrongness 
of  things. 

But  we  hope  to  have  suggested  in  the  course  of  these 
criticisms  that  the  present  condition  of  art  does  not 
justify  Tolstoi's  proposal  that  in  the  future  art  should 
be  reduced  to  being  a  mere  adjunct  of  ethical  education, 
or,  failing  that,  should  be  banished  from  the  world  as 
futile  or  degrading.  In  pointing  out,  as  we  have  done, 
the  imperious  nature  of  that  desire  for  beauty  which 
normally  regulates  all  the  practical  constructive  energies 
of  mankind,  and  subdues  to  its  purposes  all  human 
impulses  to  imitation  and  expression,  imposing  a  how 
entirely  separate  and  sui  generis;  and  in  clearing  up 
that  confusion  among  conflicting  aesthetic  theories  of 
which  Tolstoi  has  taken  such  advantage,  we  have 
brought  home,  we  hope,  to  the  reader  the  presumption 
that  an  instinct  so  special  and  so  powerful  must  play 
some  very  important  part  in  the  bodily  and  mental 
harmony  of  man.  Further,  while  indicating  the  natural 
mechanism  by  which,  under  normal  circumstances,  the 
appreciation  and  enjoyment  of  artistic  forms  have  kept 
pace  with  their  changes,  and  familiarity  with  the  various 
kinds  of  beauty  in  the  humblest  and  commonest  objects 


156  TOLSTOI   ON   ART 

of  utility  has  rendered  spontaneous  the  perception  of 
the  same  kinds  of  beauty  in  their  higher,  more  complex, 
and  less  utilitarian  developments,  we  have  shown  that 
this  special  and  imperious  aesthetic  craving  has  created 
its  own  natural  and  universal  modes  of  satisfaction. 
We  have  seen  that  art,  considered  as  the  production  of 
beautiful  objects  or  arrangements,  has  been  sponta- 
neously produced,  spontaneously  enjoyed,  and  univer- 
sally diffused,  in  one  or  other  of  its  categories,  through- 
out the  whole  of  the  past ;  and,  having  taken  notice  of 
the  disturbing  influences  which  have  interrupted  this 
normal  condition  of  things  in  the  present,  we  have 
shown  reason  to  expect  a  return  thereunto  in  the  future. 
The  wrong  condition  of  things  with  regard  to  art  is  the 
result  of  other  wrong  conditions,  intellectual,  social, 
and  economic,  inevitable  in  a  period  of  excessive,  com- 
plex, and,  so  to  speak,  compound,  change  ;  and  as  these 
wrong  conditions  cannot  fail  to  right  themselves,  the 
adjustment  of  the  question  of  art  will  follow  as  the 
result  of  other  adjustments.  In  what  precise  manner 
this  may  take  place  it  would  be  presumptuous  to  fore- 
cast ;  but  this  much  may  be  affirmed,  that  the  ascetic 
subordination  of  art  to  ethical  teaching  will  play  no 
part  in  it.  Imperfect,  and  even  in  some  ways  intolerable 
to  our  moral  sense,  as  is  the  present  condition  of  art, 
as  Tolstoi  has  victoriously  demonstrated,  let  those 
among  us  whom  it  offends  reflect  that  even  under  such 
evident  wrong  conditions  it  is  not  mere  selfishness  to 
preserve  the  art  of  the  past  and  foster  the  art  of 
the  present  for  the  benefit  of  a  more  just  and  whole- 
some, a  more  developed  and  more  traditionally  normal, 
future.  Moreover  art,  like  science  and  like  practical 


TOLSTOI   ON    ART  157 

well-being,  will  in  the  long  run  take  care  oi  itself; 
because,  despite  Tolstoi's  statement  to  the  contrary, 
art,  like  morality  itself,  is  necessary  to  mankind's  full 
and  harmonious  life. 


NIETZSCHE   AND   THE   "WILL   TO 
POWER  " 


NIETZSCHE  AND  THE  "WILL  TO  POWER" 

I 

THE  fact  that  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  when  released 
from  life  at  only  fifty-six,  had  already  survived 
his  reasonable  soul  by  nearly  eleven  years,  disposes 
of  his  philosophy  with  miraculous  satisfactoriness  for 
some  of  his  opponents.  But  it  is  liable  to  make 
those  feel  almost  abashed  who  do  not  relish  such  cheap 
irony  on  the  part  of  Fate. 

I  wish  to  make  it  plain,  therefore,  that,  though 
the  final  catastrophe  of  this  great  mind  appears  to 
me  to  have  had  constitutional  causes  and  preliminary 
symptoms  which  affected  the  doomed  man's  manner 
of  being  and  therefore  of  thinking,  yet  it  is  my 
conviction  that  the  psychological  interest  and  moral 
importance  of  what,  following  his  own  example,  I 
venture  to  designate  as  "  the  Case  of  Nietzsche " 
would  have  been  quite  as  real,  though  less  vulgarly 
obvious,  had  it  never  been  rounded  off  by  so  frightful 
a  logico-dramatic  coincidence.  If,  therefore,  I  proceed 
to  deal  with  Nietzsche's  philosophy  as  the  expression 
of  spiritual  and  bodily  unhealthiness,  let  it  be  under- 
stood that  I  am  referring  only  to  the  kind  of  madness 

ii 


161 


162  NIETZSCHE  AND 

which  Nietzsche's  Wise  Man  prayed  for — "Give 
me,  ye  Powers,  madness,  that  I  may  believe  in 
myself!  " — and  not  at  all  to  the  miserable  obliter- 
ation of  mind  with  which  an  atrocious  and  stupid 
destiny  was  preparing  to  answer  that  prayer.  For 
it  is  with  this  "  madness  that  he  might  believe 
in  himself"  that  I  intend  to  deal  in  the  following 
pages. 

The  soundest  and,  therefore,  the  most  living  and 
fertile  part  of  a  philosopher's  work  is,  perhaps,  that 
which  makes  him  not  unlike,  but  like,  his  fellows  ; 
nay,  the  possibility  of  being  assimilated  by  the  future  is, 
in  many  cases,  in  direct  proportion  to  the  fact  of 
having  been  assimilated  from  the  past.  But  my 
object,  in  the  present  study,  has  not  been  the  extract- 
ing of  what  I  consider  the  most  valuable  productions 
of  Nietzsche's  extraordinary  mind  ;  all  the  various 
"  selections,  philosophies  and  quintessences  "  of  Nietz- 
sche are  amply  sufficient  in  their  unintentional  mis- 
representation of  him  as  a  typically  sane,  sound  and 
socially  normal  thinker.  My  object  has  been,  on  the 
contrary,  to  collect  into  a  synthetic  group  (the  synthesis 
representing  Nietzsche's  individual  temperament)  those 
peculiarities  which  differentiate  him  from  nearly  all 
other  equally  great  thinkers  ;  peculiarities  which 
bring  him  into  conflict,  not  merely,  as  he  gloried  in 
feeling,  with  the  mental  habits  of  hypocrites,  Philis- 
tines and  decadents,  but  with  the  modes  of  thinking 
and  feeling  indispensable  for  the  continuance  of  the 
human  race,  and  therefore  deeply  ingrained  in  the 
human  race's  composition.  I  desire,  in  short,  to  see 
what  was  at  the  bottom  of  Nietzsche's  characteristic 


THE  "WILL  TO   POWER"  163 

views  of  life,  in  order  to  judge  whether  life  is  likely 
to  cultivate  or  to  weed  out  this  type  of  philosophy 
and  this  type  of  philosopher. 


II 

"  There  is  no  Will  to  Existence,"  says  Zarathustra  ; 
*'  for  what  does  not  yet  exist,  cannot  will  ;  and,  as 
to  that  which  does  exist,  how  could  it  possibly  will  to 
exist  ?  " 

Besides  a  combination  of  a  truism  ("  that  which 
does  not  exist,  cannot  will  ")  with  an  entirely  unproven 
assumption  ("  that  which  does  exist  cannot  will  to 
exist "),  we  have  here  a  confusion  between  an  abstract 
metaphorical  statement  and  an  individual  concrete 
fact.  Philosophically  speaking,  no  one  has  ever 
attributed  to  the  individual  human  being  dominant, 
unfailing  desire  for  continued  existence,  so  that  its 
denial  cannot  be  the  core  of  Zarathustra's  supreme 
discovery  ;  and  we  must  look  for  that  in  the  denial 
of  that  metaphorical  Will  under  which  the  genius 
of  Schopenhauer  adumbrated  the  great  generalisations 
of  modern^Jbiology.  The  necessity  of  growing,  re-)  *"**WLj*t* 
producing,  varying,  adapting,  of  surviving  at  any 
price,  this,  and  this  only,  can  be  called  the  Will 
to  Existence.  But  this  is  an  abstraction,  an  allegory, 
though  a  perfectly  fitting  one,  and  the  Will  to  Exis-  ^^fjj 
tence  can  be  postulated,  and  has  been  postulated,  only 
of  that  abstract  and  allegorical  entity,  the  Species. 
For  this  Will  to  Existence  Nietzsche,  in  probably 
conscious  contradiction  to  his  discarded  master,  Schopen- 


-«. 


164  NIETZSCHE   AND 

hauer,  tries  therefore  to  substitute  a  Will  to  Power  ; 
and  the  form  of  speech  renders  such  a  substitution 
superficially  possible  ;  Will  is  will,  and  you  need 
only  write  "Power"  after  effacing  "Existence." 
But  this  operation  is  a  delusion  or  a  piece  of  trickery, 
an  attempt  at  exchanging  things  which  do  not  belong 
to  the  same  category.  Looking  at  that  abstraction 
called  "  the  Species,"  and  expressing  our  generalisa- 
tions about  it  under  the  metaphorical  form  of  Will, 
we  are  struck  immediately  by  the  utter  indifference 
manifested  by  the  Species  to  any  such  relation  as  is 
implied  by  the  word  "  Power  "  ;  and  by  the  meta- 
phorical readiness  which  the  Species  displays,  on  the 
contrary,  for  proceedings  absolutely  negatived  by 
the  word  "  Power  "  :  a  readiness  to  alter,  to  dwindle, 
to  lie  low,  to  degenerate,  to  submit  to  any  tyranny, 
privation  or  parasitic  condition,  or  even  to  self-mutila- 
tion rather  than  allow  itself  to  die.  Indeed,  the 
survival  through  self-effacement,  as  distinguished  from 
self-assertion  (and  power  implies  self-assertion),  is  so 
frequent  an  occurrence  in  the  life  of  Species,  that  I 
cannot  read  Nietzsche's  description  of  the  methods 
towards  survival  attributed  by  him  to  primitive 
Christian  communities,  without  thinking  of  some 
naturalist's  account  of  a  sort  of  animal  which,  after 
living  in  decent  independence  on  land  or  in  water, 
has  got  itself  imprisoned,  by  the  ruthless  Will  to 
Existence,  in  the  diseased  body  of  some  more  powerful 
kind  of  creature.  So  that,  if  Zarathustra  meant  to 
replace  Schopenhauer's  great  Will,  the  Will  to  Exis- 
tence, tingling  (as  we  seem  to  feel  it)  throughout  the 
universe,  by  his  more  "  vornehm  "  Will  to  Power,  he 


THE   "WILL   TO   POWER"  165 

must  take  back  his  remark  ;  for  Nature  cares  nothing 
for  his  new  scale  of  values. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  Will  to  Power  may  and  does 
exist  as  an  individual  phenomenon.  But  (and  here  we 
begin  our  real  examination  of  Nietzsche's  views  in 
reference  to  that  very  "  Life,"  which  he  thought  he  so 
aristocratically  accepted),  whatever  exists  in  the  indi- 
vidual is,  speaking  metaphorically,  yet  very  correctly, 
subject  to  the  Will  of  the  Species  ;  and  the  Will  of 
the  Species  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  mere  Will  to 
.Existence.  Like  any  other  peculiarity,  the  Will  to; 
Power  develops  so  long  as  it  conduces  to  survival, 
and  atrophies  to  the  extent  to  which  it  becomes  a 
danger.  The  individual  who  possesses  it  either 
flourishes  and  hands  it  on  to  his  descendants  and 
his  imitators,  or  comes  to  grief  and  carries  the 
quality  which  has  ruined  him  into  helplessness  or 
annihilation. 

Thus  the  Will  to  Existence,  of  which,  as  of  all 
other  divinities,  the  exclusive  pride  of  Nietzsche  would 
not  brook  the  reality,  shows  itself  to  be  a  god  of 
most  ruthless  practicality  ;  and  every  other  kind  of 
volition,  every  instinct,  habit  or  tendency  of  living 
creatures,  all  the  demiurgi,  Olympian  or  subterranean, 
radiantly  conscious  or  obscurely  and  blindly  teeming, 
can  hold  their  sway  only  at  its  inexorable  behest. 

Translated  into  prosaic  literalness,  the  question  may 
therefore  be  stated  as  follows  :  Does  the  predominance 
of  self-consciousness  and  the  assertion  of  the  ego, 
which,  taken  together,  constitute  Nietzsche's  Will 
to  Power,  offer  such  advantages  to  the  human  race 
as  to  have  fostered  this  Will  to  Power  to  an  exorbitant 


i66  NIETZSCHE   AND 

degree  in  the  past,  or  as  to  foster  it,  so  far  as  we  can 
foresee,  to  still  completer  supremacy  in  the  future  ? 
We  may  get  an  approximate  answer  to  this  question 
in  the  course  of  examining  some  of  the  mental  and 
emotional  tendencies  and  habits  which  Nietzsche  con- 
demns in  mankind,  as  the  unworthy  rivals  to  the 
Will  to  Power,  and  perhaps  arrive  at  some  conclusion 
by  subsequently  glancing  also  at  the  position  which 
Nietzsche  takes  up  towards  life  as  a  whole,  that  is  to 
say,  towards  that  Will  to  Existence  of  which  he  so 
rudely  denies  the  existence. 


Til 


First  and  foremost  among  the  opponents  to  the 
Will  to  Power  is  what  we  may  roughly  sum  up  as 
Duty.  Conspicuous  among  the  prophecies  of  Zara- 
thustra  are  those  concerning  the  great  Lion  from 
out  of  the  desert,  who  fights  and  destroys  the  great 
Dragon  whose  wings  are  inscribed  with  command- 
ments. "  Thou  Shalt "  is  the  name  of  the  great 
Dragon,  but  the  spirit  of  the  Lion  says,  "  I  Will." 
While  busy  demolishing  the  Free  Will  of  Christian 
and  of  Kantian  ethics,  Nietzsche  had  himself  made 
a  superb  demonstration  of  the  fundamental  identity  of 
that  Lion  "I  Will  "  and  that  Dragon  "Thou  Shalt"  ; 
or,  rather,  he  had  shown  that  neither  the  Lion  nor  the 
Dragon  had  any  kind  of  real  existence.  But,  taken 
upon  the  plane  of  the  illusion  inevitable  in  our  feeling, 
such  a  seeming  division  and  opposition  between  the 
inner  and  the  outer  Will  can  and  must  be  recognised  ; 


THE   "WILL   TO   POWER"  167 

and  Nietzsche  could  legitimately  split  up  the  Chimaera, 
Free  Will,  into  the  solitary,  rebellious  Lion  and  the 
.obsequious,  philistine  Dragon.  But,  if  we  are  to 
discuss  not  the  metaphysics  of  Free  Will,  but  the 
phenomenon  of  apparent  alternative  as  manifest  in 
experience,  the  question  of  Thou  Shalt  and  /  Will  takes 
a  different  aspect. 

There  is  more  than  a  rough  and  ready  practicality 
("pour  encourager  les  autres"  like  Voltaire's  court 
martial  on  Admiral  Byng)  in  the  legal  limitation  of 
responsibility  to  such  individuals  as  are  neither  idiots 
nor  maniacs.  For,  as  the  appearance  of  volition  exists 
only  in  the  face  of  two  conceivable  modes  of  action, 
which  imply  consciousness,  there  can  be  no  will,  no 
choice,  in  cases  where  the  instincts  have  the  blind, 
automatic  action  of  reflexes.  There  is,  therefore,  a 
greater  appearance  of  volition  in  obeying  a  law  and 
conforming  to  a  standard  than  in  acting  under 
the  undivided  pressure  of  a  habit  or  an  appetite. 
Nietzsche  was  thoroughly  aware  of  all  this,  and  had, 
moreover,  the  proud  and  combative  and  self-centred 
man's  excessive  and  un philosophical  scorn  for  any- 
thing like  habits,  blind  instincts  and  reflexes.  He 
therefore  formulated  (I  was  going  to  write  :  "  he  was 
therefore  obliged  to  formulate,"  but  these  are  words 
he  never  would  have  admitted  with  reference  to 
himself)  something  opposed  to  obscure  instinctive 
preferences,  but  opposed  also  to  all  categorical  im- 
peratives :  an  individual  standard  and  law  (including 
pretended  subversion  of  all  previous  standards  and 
laws),  a  private  categorical  imperative  so  rigid  that 
slavery,  degradation,  Dantesque  dung-ponds  of  igno- 


i68  NIETZSCHE  AND 

miny,  were  the  ineluctable  punishment  of  their  non- 
recognition  ;  let  alone,  of  course,  a  fine  preliminary 
bout  of  Zarathustrian  philosophising  on  them  "  with  the 
hammer." 

Thus  Nietzsche  was  never  able  to  carry  his  indivi- 
dualism (as  his  predecessor  Stirner  had  done)  to  its 
logical  conclusion  of  anarchy  inside  as  well  as  outside 
the  individual.  He  committed  the  inconsequence  (to 
which  we  owe  some  of  his  most  beautiful  and  perhaps 
immortal  sentences)  of  preaching  the  most  rigorous 
hierarchy,  and  hierarchic  commanding  and  obeying, 
within  the  soul  of  the  lawbreaker  himself.  I  call  this 
an  inconsequence,  and  hope  to  demonstrate  that  it 
was  one  ;  fruitful,  moreover,  like  many  of  the  inconse- 
quences of  one-sided  thinkers.  Nietzsche,  of  course, 
asserted  that  this  regime  of  categorical  imperatives  was 
the  outcome,  solely,  of  the  individual  himself ;  and 
that  the  Zarathustrian  person  (to  say  nothing  of  the 
eventually  coming  "  Uber-Mensch ")  went  through 
this  noviciate  of  purifications,  professed  this  rule  of 
vigils  and  chastenings  (so  singular  in  a  theoretic 
opponent  of  asceticism),  for  the  simple  gratification 
of  his  own  fine  gentleman's  taste.  But,  if  we  look 
at  facts,  this  superlative  Zarathustrian  "  good  form  " 
(for  as  such  this  moral  Beau  Brummel  gives  it  us)  is, 
like  every  other  kind  of  good  form,  a  product  for 
which  no  isolated  individuality  could  suffice,  and  for 
which  no  pressure  of  merely  individual  preference 
could  originally  account.  It  is  essentially  an  historical, 
sociological  product.  Intent  upon  his  own  moral 
posturings  and  gestures  (in  which  the  old  Stoical 
mantle,  and  even  sundry  Christian  academic  properties, 


THE   "WILL   TO   POWER"  169 

were  unconsciously  made  use  of),  Nietzsche  found  it 
convenient  to  take  for  granted  the  ready-made  Zara- 
thustrian  individual,  attitudes,  gestures,  good  taste 
and  all  ;  and  therefore  averted  his  glance  from  the 
genesis  and  evolution  thereof.  For,  in  that  genesis 
and  evolution  of  Zarathustra's  "  good  taste,"  the 
principal  part  had  been  played  throughout  the  centu- 
ries by  that  which  Nietzsche  most  furiously  disliked 
(reserving  it  to  explain  only  the  Socratic,  Christian, 
Kantian,  or  other  unclean  spirits) — namely,  the  race 
at  large,  the  instincts,  claims  and  habits  of  the  majority 
of  human  beings  so  utterly  offensive  to  Nietzsche's 
sense  of  smell  and  somewhat  queasy  stomach.  And, 
in  a  way,  Nietzsche  actually  placed  himself  in  the 
impossibility  of  denying  such  villainous  origin, 
which  a  thoroughpaced  anarchic  thinker  like  Stirner 
would  have  made  short  work  of,  together  with 
formulas,  standards,  and  good  taste  of  any  kind. 
Nietzsche,  as  was  inevitable  in  one  who  frankly 
objected  to  gods  of  all  sorts — because,  "  if  there  were 
gods,  how  could  he  have  endured  not  being  one  of 
them," — Nietzsche,  filling  up  his  own  horizon,  had 
pretty  well  sent  Nature  (and  the  Will  to  Existence) 
to  the  Coventry  of  the  Lucretian  gods,  and  very 
rarely  referred  to  her  or  it.  But  the  possession  of 
the  finest  taste  unfortunately  requires,  not  merely 
recognition,  but  a  standard  ;  and  thus  the  isolated 
superfine  individual  was  betrayed  into  calling  on 
Nature's  testimony  to  the  correctness  of  his  moral 
attitude  and  manner.  "  All  the  audacity,  the  fineness 
and  keenness  that  have  ever  existed,"  he  writes,  "  all 
the  masterly  certainty  and  dancelike  spirit,  have 


170 


NIETZSCHE  AND 


developed  themselves,  thanks  to  the  tyranny  of  such 
self-imposed  law  (Willkur-Gesetze\  and  it  is  by  no 
means  improbable  that  just  this,  and  not  a  system  of 
Iaissez-a/lery  is  nature  and  natural"  Nietzsche  did 
not  know  how  large  a  door  he  was  opening  in  this 
second  part  of  the  sentence  :  a  door,  a  gate,  through 
which  what  should  sweep  in  but  that  deposed,  rejected, 
utterly  banished  Will  to  Existence  ?  For,  if  the 
individual  has  not  grown  as  a  mere  random  jumble 
of  uncoordinated  instincts,  this  is  explained  by  his  not 
existing  as  an  isolated  individual,  companionless,  in 
vacuo.  Man  is,  more  or  less,  a  composite  and  orderly 
whole  because  he  is  an  integral  part  of  a  whole  which 
can  be  only  composite  and  orderly.  Naturalness, 
which  Nietzsche  invoked  as  a  final  condemnation  of 
spiritual  anarchy,  is  merely  a  word  for  suitability 
to  the  ways  of  other  things,  adaptation  to  that  great 
abstract  whole  which  allows  insubordinate  doings 


A 


neither  in  single  individuals  nor  in  single  instincts. 
The  law-to-himself  of  the  finer  human  being  is  the 
expression  of  a  more  perfect  and  well-nigh  automatic 
adaptation  to  the  hierarchy  outside.  Nay,  far  below 
the  sphere  of  such  ethical  good  form,  we  find  concentric 
circles  of  inner  coordination,  without  which  we  could 
not  move,  stand,  digest  or  grow,  let  alone  perceive, 
feel,  think  or  will.  But  if  there  did  not  exist,  if  there 
had  not  existed  for  aeons,  creatures  more  or  less 
similar  around  us,  if  the  universe  had  cared  to  produce 
only  isolated  higher  individuals,  or  Super-Men,  would 
there  have  been  a  need  for  such  a  complex  form  of 
life  ;  a  need  for  reactions,  so  intricate  and  so  sub- 
ordinate to  one  another ;  a  need  for  perception,  will 


THE   "WILL   TO   POWER"  171 

or  thought ;   an  opening,  so  to  speak,  for  such  super- 
fine moral  manners  ? 

IV 

After  the  great  Dragon,  Duty,  let  us  pass  on  to  the 
consideration  of  what  Nietzsche  regards  as  the  vilest 
of  all  small  moral  worms  :  Humility.  The  word 
"  worm "  is  appropriate  ;  for  Nietzsche  derives  its 
origin  from  the  practical  wisdom  of  rolling  up  and 
shamming  death  in  order  to  avoid  a  second  crushing. 
Granted,  as  is  very  possible,  that  such  is  its  real 
genealogy,  there  comes  the  question,  why  Nature  (for 
even  Nietzsche  has  unwillingly  to  admit  that  there  is 
Nature)  should  have  preserved  this  particular  ditch-\Ucvc- 
begotten  little  virtue  ?  The  answer  is,  simply,  that  Itctt 

o  x     /  ' 

Humility  happens  to  afford  an  excellent  corrective  for 
a  particular  optical  illusion  to  which  the  human  being, 
Mensch  or  Uber-Mensch,  is  condemned  (with  danger 
to  his  comfort  and  even  his  existence),  by  a  trifling 
peculiarity  of  his  constitution.  I  am  alluding,  of  course, 
to  the  fact  that  we,  all  of  us,  happen  to  be  enclosed 
in  our  own  skin,  and  are  therefore  aware  of  our  own 
existence  in  a  more  direct,  intimate  and  forcible  manner 
than  of  the  existence  of  others.  Those  others,  mean- 
while, similarly  enclosed,  are  afflicted  by  the  selfsame 
unevenness  of  perception  :  the  inside,  namely,  oneself, 
is  thoroughly  visible,  audible,  intelligible  and  im- 
perative ;  the  outside,  or  not-oneself,  becomes  an 
accessory  or  background,  and  tends  perpetually  to  . 
vanish  altogether.  The  virtue  or  vice  of  Humility 
serves  to  reverse,  in  part,  this  natural,  but  by  no  means 


UA/MT 


172 


NIETZSCHE  AND 


Vj{,- 


objectively  correct,  perspective  ;  and  thereby  tends  to 
diminish  the  wear  and  tear,  nay,  the  sometimes  fatal 
accidents,  which  it  must  otherwise  occasion.  The  fact 
of  being  what  house-agents  call  "  self-containing," 
makes  us,  each  and  all,  the  most  important  thing  we 
can  conceive.  Humility  whispers  that,  on  the  contrary, 
we  are  very  probably  by  far  the  most  unimportant 
thing  in  all  the  universe,  and  thereby  halves  our  natural 
pretensions  to  something  nearer  our  objective  bulk 
and  power.  In  this  manner  it  enables  us  to  find  room 
to  stand  in,  to  thread  our  way  among  those  too-too 
solid  ghosts,  our  fellow  men,  to  exchange  place,  to 
move,  to  expand  even  —  in  short,  to  live.  This  is  the 
service,  rendered  by  Humility,  and  this  is  why 
iTumility  has  been  fostered  by  the  racial  Will  to  Ex- 
istence, by  the  great  demiurgus,  Life,  who  shuts  his  eyes 
to  baseness  of  origin  and  primaeval  worm-  wriggling  ; 
Life,  well  aware  that,  if  the  haughty  genealogist  went 
far  enough  in  his  researches,  he  would  find  wrigglings 
of  some  kind,  and  animals  less  aristocratic  than 
worms,  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  most  distinguished 
family  histories. 

The  reason  why  Life  can  be  less  squeamish  than 
Nietzsche,  and  yet,  somehow,  maintain  a  certain 
aesthetic  dignity  and  have  as  grand  an  air  as  any 
Zarathustra  brandishing  his  Will  to  Power,  is  that 
Life  possesses  the  secret  of  great  transmutations, 
transfigurations,  of  which  Nietzsche  gradually  lost  the 
very  conception.  After  Humility,  Compassion  is,  in 
his  eyes,  the  vilest  and  most  vicious  of  Christian 
virtues.  Sickness,  weakness,  says  Nietzsche,  requires 
only  one  thing  —  to  be  cleared  away.  That  depends, 


THE   "WILL  TO   POWER"  173 

common  sense  has  answered  for  centuries,  in  fact  for' 
seons,  how  sick  the  sick,  how  weak  the  weak.  It  isi 
the  strength  of  the  weak  man,  the  healthiness  of  the 
organs  still  free  from  disease,  to  which  Compassion 
addresses  itself,  and  which,  with  help  and  time,  effects 
survival  and  recovery.  Nay,  what  we  look  upon  as 
symptoms  of  disease,  or  as  faintings  and  failings  of 
weakness,  are  frequently,  in  the  moral  order  as  well 
as  the  bodily,  adaptations  to  a  difficult  crisis,  diminished 
claims,  nay,  even  inverted  instincts,  fostered  by  the  great 
Will  to  Existence.  Take  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ," 
that  almost  complete,  perhaps  because  almost  posthu- 
mous, manifesto  of  the  millenarian  and  ascetic  and 
self-humiliating  sides  of  Christianity.  To  us,  particu- 
larly to  us  when  in  health  and  prosperity,  it  may  have 
a  taste  which  is  mawkish,  a  taste  of  physic,  if  not  of 
poison  ;  but  for  centuries  it  was,  and  in  individual 
cases  (till  wisdom  and  gentleness  invent  a  better 
compound)  it  still  remains  a  pain-killer,  a  sleeping 
draught  which  has  saved  from  death  or  from  madness. 
Christianity  as  defined  by  Nietzsche — that  is  to  say, 
Christianity  in  its  most  questionable  and  perishable 
aspect — constituted,  after  all,  only  one  of  the  many 
modus  vivendi  which  the  race  made  for  itself  at  various 
stages  of  its  difficult  existence  :  regimens  of  brutality 
and  narrow-mindedness  or  of  self-suppression  and 
mystic  stultification,  Spartan,  early  Aryan,  early 
Hebraic,  Buddhist,  Christian — all  representing  a 
mutilation  or  a  narcotising  of  some  one  of  the  soul's 
possibilities ;  each  of  them  furnishing,  in  its  turn, 
a  balance  of  desirable  effects  over  effects  undesirable  or 
actually  pernicious.  Looked  at  dispassionately,  there 


'74 


NIETZSCHE   AND 


is  no  grosser  falsehood  in  the  notion  that  the  individual 
ego  is  necessarily  sinful,  than  in  the  notion  that  the 
individual  tribe  or  cast  or  race  is  necessarily  impeccable  ; 
nor  is  it  more  lop-sided  to  give  unto  others  what  would 
be  best  employed  by  oneself,  than  to  take  away  from 
others  what  might  best  be  employed  by  them.  Indeed, 
one  may  ask  oneself  whether  Tolstoi,  let  us  say,  is  really 
less  of  a  human  being,  if  he  is  really  more  warped  and 
maimed,  more  of  a  cripple  and  a  monster  than — well, 
than  Nietzsche. 


Let  us  leave  the  ground  of  human  duty  and  virtue, 
and  pass  on,  "  Beyond  Good  and  Evil,"  to  that  which 
Nietzsche  considered  the  only  real  one  :  the  ground 
of  human  greatness.  What  did  Nietzsche  make  of 
the  Human  Work  ?  The  work,  which  is  the  test  and 
the  reason  of  Carlyle's  Hero  and  of  Kenan's  Prospero- 
Sage,  had  no  intrinsic  interest  in  Nietzsche's  eyes,  no 
place  in  his  philosophy.  Its  importance  for  him  was 
merely  as  an  expression  of  what  he  very  erroneously 
took  it  to  be,  the  outcome  of  an  individual  tempera- 
ment, the  manifestation  of  a  Will  to  Power.  Now, 
Nietzsche  did  not  really  want  any  Will  to  Power 
except  his  own,  and  he  had  a  positively  morbid  dislike 
to  coming  in  contact  with  other  people's  temperament. 
It  is  understating  the  case  to  say  that  nineteen  out  of 
every  twenty  references  he  makes  to  the  work  of  other 
men  are  expressions  of  aversion,  contempt  or  disgust  : 
and  it  is  no  mere  coincidence  that  his  ideal,  Zara- 
thustra,  in  all  we  are  told  about  his  life,  preaches, 


4 


THE   "WILL   TO   POWER"  175 

reviles,  laughs,  dances,  nay,  even  lets  himself  once 
or  twice  be  lured  into  the  deadly  sin  of  pity,  but  on  no 
single  occasion  extracts  pleasure  or  profit  from  any 
other  human  being  or  any  human  being's  work.  The 
assimilation  of  other  men's  greatness,  the  enriching 
oneself  by  appreciation,  is  never  mentioned  as  part 
of  the  processes  of  growth  of  the  great  man,  of  the 
Super-Man.  His  relations,  when  not  of  scorn  and 
destruction,  are  entirely  confined  to  his  own  solitary 
person  ;  he  develops  merely  by  wrestling  with  himself 
and  by  expressing  himself ;  he  remains  (even  if  multi- 
plied to  a  possible  race  of  Super-Men)  not  merely  j 
isolated  and  solitary,  but  virtually  alone  in  the  universe  ;  ;^*cc  IJL+* 
a  colossal  Michelangelesque  figure,  with  immense 
sinews  and  rather  academic  draperies,  filling  up  a 
narrow  background  entirely  devoid  of  vegetation, 
houses,  or  any  incident  except  two  or  three  symbolical 
animals  ;  he  stands  or,  as  Nietzsche  represents  him,  he 
dances,  in  a  dignified  manner  though  a  dreary  one  ; 
and,  when  he  is  not  inveighing  against  the  sickening 
peculiarities  of  the  human  race  he  has  turned  his 
back  upon,  he  is  engaged  in  the  one  act  for  which 
he  specially  exists.  The  Super-Man  says  "  '  Yes '  to 
life."  But,  before  inquiring  into  the  precise  nature 
of  this  "  'Yes  '  to  life,"  let  us  forestall  all  possibility 
of  its  being  mistaken  for  any  kind  of  philosophic  or 
poetical  act  of  contemplation  of  life's  loveliness  or 
mystery.  The  more  so  that  we  shall  incidentally 
gain  some  further,  and  some  terribly  significant, 
insight  into  the  temperament  with  which  Nietzsche 
himself  had  to  face  life.  Here  is  his  "  genesis " 
of  the  Vita  Contem'plativa  : 


1 76  NIETZSCHE   AND 

"  In  primitive  times,  the  individual,  conscious  of 
his  own  strength,  is  busy  translating  his  feelings  and 
thoughts  (Vorstellungen)  into  acts,  as  in  hunting, 
robbing,  aggression,  ill-usage  and  murder,  without 
counting  such  fainter  imitations  of  such  proceedings  as 
he  finds  tolerated  within  his  own  community."  (Here 
I  must  open  a  parenthesis  to  remark  upon  the  utter 
overlooking  by  Nietzsche  of  an  activity  which  must 
necessarily  have  been  enormously  developed  in  primitive 
times,  the  activity  of  invention  and  manual  dexterity.) 
"  But  if  his  vigour  diminish,"  proceeds  Nietzsche  in 
his  account  of  the  primaeval  man,  "  if  he  feel  tired 
or  sick  or  depressed  or  glutted,  and  therefore  momen- 
n,  tarily  delivered  of  desire,  then  he  becomes  a  compara- 
'  tively  better,  that  is  to  say,  more  harmless,  creature. 
It  is  in  this  condition  that  he  becomes  a  thinker  and  a 
reader  of  the  future.  But  his  thoughts,  all  the  products 
of  his  mind,  must  necessarily  reflect  his  momentary 
condition,  that  is  to  say,  the  beginning  of  cowardice 
and  fatigue,  the  diminished  importance  in  his  feelings 
of  activity  and  enjoyment."  Let  us  examine  this 
statement.  Nietzsche  identifies,  quite  unwarrantably, 
the  normal  satisfaction  of  appetite  with  queasy  and 
languid  indigestion  :  according  to  him,  the  Berserker 
at  rest  must  be  the  sick  Berserker.  Nietzsche  has  no 
recognition  of  the  obvious  fact  that,  in  the  healthy 
creature,  the  satisfaction  of  a  want  does  not  in  the 
least  mean  the  exhaustion  of  an  energy  (he  sophistically 
or  perhaps  merely  characteristically,  autobiographically, 
identifies  desire  for  objects  with  desire  for  action),  and 
that,  shelter,  food,  the  first  necessaries  once  obtained, 
this  energy  will  be  at  liberty,  will  go  into  other  things, 


THE  "WILL   TO   POWER'  177 

useful  inventions,  mechanical  work,  and,  those  having 
given  their  result,  into  the  superfluous  pleasantness  of 
play,  art  and  thought.  Nietzsche  is  even  guilty  of 
self-contradiction.  He  certainly  seems  to  consider 
activity  as  due  to  a  desire  for  asserting  power ;  yet  he 
supposes  activity  to  flag  with  the  satisfaction  of  definite 
material  wants.  However  this  be,  he  entirely  ignores  the 
fact  of  the  transmission  to  another  employment  of  what- 
ever energy  is  liberated  by  the  cessation  of  a  want,  a 
fact  which  is  at  the  root  of  human  history,  and  explains 
all  the  successive  complexities  of  human  activity,  bodily 
and  mental.  But  having  established  the  origin  of  the 
Vita  Confemplativa,  of  thought,  imagination,  all  the 
higher  powers,  in  the  slackness  and  nausea  of  the 
savage  weary  of  violence  and  sick  with  surfeit,  "  Pudenda 
origo  ! "  he  has  the  audacity  to  exclaim  at  his  own 
libellous  account  !  Having  done  this,  he  continues 
his  attack  on  the  life  of  the  spirit  by  asserting  that 
men  of  genius  poison  normal  life  by  their  demand 
for  exceptional  moments.  "  In  the  same  manner,"  he 
says,  "as  we  see  savages  exterminating  themselves 
by  the  use  of  alcohol,  so  mankind  as  a  whole  and  in 
its  more  important  qualities  (im  ganzen  und  grosser?)  has 
been  slowly  but  thoroughly  corrupted  by  the  spiritual 
alcoholics  of  intoxicating  feelings,  and  by  the  craving 
therefor.  Who  knows  ?  Perhaps  mankind  will  even 
be  exterminated  thereby." 

Thought,  sympathetic  perception,  inventive  calcu- 
lation, imaginative  and  aesthetic  joy,  all  that  spiritual 
activity  which  enriches  life,  enabling  it  to  bring  forth 
more,  demanding  less  weariness  and  waste,  substituting 
enjoyment  which  can  be  shared  for  enjoyment  which 

12 


178  NIETZSCHE  AND 

must  be  fought  for — all  this  an  alcoholic  unfitting 
mankind  to  live  !  Alas,  alas  !  How  deep  must  be 
the  disease  which  thus  converts  his  fellow-creature's 
best  food  into  mere  poison  for  this  wretched  Nietzsche's 
nerves  !  "  Pudenda  origo ! "  one  may,  indeed,  exclaim, 
not  of  the  spiritual  life,  but  of  this  man's  view  of  it. 
We  can  now  understand  what  Nietzsche's  "  saying 
*  Yes '  to  life "  implies,  and  how  it  comes  to  be  the 
culmination  of  a  creed  whose  basis,  as  Nietzsche  has 
told  us,  is  "  a  certain  pleasure  in  saying  '  No.'  ' 


VI 


According  to  Nietzsche's  belief,  under  the  rubric 
of  the  "  Eternal  Return,"  every  item  and  every 
concatenation  of  items  of  the  universe's  existence  is 
bound  to  repeat  itself  in  cycles  of  absolutely  precise 
similarity.  By  this  doctrine,  therefore,  Nietzsche  is 
enabled  (however  unconsciously)  to  withdraw  the  one 
ideal  and  the  one  consolation  which  he  had  apparently 
conceded  to  the  weakness  of  all  philosophers  :  the 
Super-Man  and  his  "  Yes "  will  indeed  come,  have 
indeed  come,  an  infinity  of  times  and  already ;  but  the 
Super-Man  and  his  "  Yes "  also  pass,  have  passed, 
must  pass,  and  be  succeeded  by  a  Da  Capo,  eternal 
like  his  comings  and  goings,  of  everything  that  is  not 
Super-Man  and  not  "  'Yes'  to  life."  This  cosmic  fact, 
as  Nietzsche  affects  to  consider  it,  implies  necessarily 
a  return  of  all  those  things  which  the  Super-Man 
appeared  to  have  cleared  away  ;  indeed,  the  eight  days' 
illness  which  the  discovery  of  the  Eternal  Return  cost 


THE   "WILL   TO   POWER"  179 

Zarathustra  is  very  clearly  referred  to  that  almost  Super- 
Man's  recognition  of  the  return — infinitely  repeated — 
of  the  meanness  of  spirit,  the  sympathy  and  desire  for 
sympathy,  the  pity  and  humility,  all  the  slave's-morality 
of  that  plebeian  civilisation  which  offended  the 
aristocratic  Nietzsche  by  its  stuffiness  and  evil  smell. 
And  it  is  this  next  to  intolerable  fact,  it  is  this  revolting 
habit  on  the  part  of  "  Life,"  to  which,  above  all  else, 
the  famous  "  Yes  "  of  the  Super-Man  is  to  be  addressed 
with  singing  and  dancing.  The  " '  Yes '  to  life," 
therefore,  implies,  quite  consonantly  with  all  we  know 
of  Nietzsche's  tendencies,  a  "  No  "  not  merely  to  all 
human  hope  and  consolation,  but  a  violent  "  No  "  to 
the  assenting  Super-Man's  preferences  and  wishes.  In 
fact,  by  an  unexpected  turn,  we  find  that  the  "  tendency 
to  say  'No,'"  the '"  deliberate  ruthlessness "  which 
Nietzsche  had  attributed  to  the  original  thinker,  has 
presented  us,  at  the  hands  of  the  denouncer  of  all 
asceticism  and  pessimism,  with  but  a  new  variety  of 
the  doctrine  of  renunciation. 

"  Not  merely,"  says  Nietzsche,  "  to  endure  the 
inevitable,  still  less  to  hide  it  from  ourselves  .  .  .  but* 
to  love  it."  The  thought  has  never,  perhaps,  been  put 
in  a  more  striking  form  ;  but  the  thought  is  old,  and  * 
it  has  seen  an  enormous  amount  of  service,  because  it 
has  been  on  occasions,  a  very  consoling  one.  It  runs 
through  all  Stoical  literature,  descending  from  the 
strained  but  magnificent  reasonableness  of  Epictetus 
and  Aurelius  down  to  a  denial  of  evil,  like  that  of 
American  Faith-Healers ;  it  takes  another  form,  but 
remains  essentially  the  same,  in  the  Christian  notion  of 
Providence  and  Resignation,  in  all  the  paraphrases  of 


i8o 


NIETZSCHE   AND 


Dante's  "  In  la  sua  voluntade  e  nostra  'pace ; "  it  re- 
appears as  Goethe's  "  Entbehren  sollst  du"  and  has  even 
quite  recently  been  dished  up,  a  judicious  mixture  of 
Pagan  and  Christian,  by  that  exquisite  concocter  of  not 
very  fresh  moral  and  poetic  dainties,  M.  Maeterlinck. 
And  the  ubiquitousness,  the  tenacity,  of  this  doctrine 
is  surely  explicable  by  its  belonging,  most  probably, 
to  a  category  for  which  Ibsen  has  coined  a  name,  to  its 
being,  although  in  the  highest  and  most  philosophical 
sense,  a  "  vital  lie  "  ;  one  of  those  human  inventions 
for  making  life's  occasional  difficulties  seem  easier  : 
a  drug,  a  tonic,  a  stimulant  or  a  sedative  ;  not  by  any 
means  a  poison,  but  very  far  from  being  wholesome 
daily  bread.  Every  form  of  the  doctrine  of  renuncia- 
tion, of  saying  "  Yes  "  to  that  which  naturally  provokes 
a  "  No,"  has  undoubtedly  done  great  service,  and  still 
must  do,  to  mankind  ;  making  the  human  being,  if 
not  more  fruitful,  at  all  events  (upon  the  whole)  less 
weedy,  less  parasitic  and,  in  so  far,  less  wasteful  of 
his  neighbour's  time  and  his  neighbour's  strength. 
But  it  seems  to  have  the  drawback  of  every  lie, 
even  of  vital  lies,  the  drawback,  crudely,  of  not  cor- 
responding with  facts.  The  facts  are  that  combina- 
tions do  occur  which  are  dangerous  to  human  life  and 
power,  and  that  pain  and  the  revolt  against  pain  have 
evolved  themselves  because  they  diminish  the  frequency 
of  such  evil  combinations. 

Sensitiveness  to  pain  and  abhorrence  thereof  are 
necessary  ;  and,  if  they  require  occasional  overcoming, 
it  is  merely  to  guard  against  some  greater  or  more 
universal  evil.  It  is  right,  therefore,  despite  Nietzsche, 
that  there  should  be  pity  for  others  ;  and  right,  even 


THE   "WILL  TO   POWER"  181 

more,  despite  the  Stoics,  that  there  should  be  pity  for 
ourselves.  In  the  real  "  '  Yes  '  to  life  "  (not  Zara- 
thustra's  sham  one)  there  must  even  be  implied  a  "No," 
instinctive,  passionate,  even  more  than  reasoned,  against 
such  of  life's  items  as  are  hostile  to  its  completeness 
and  duration. 

By  all  means,  therefore,  let  us  play  a  game  of  skill 
and  patience  with  Destiny  ;-  turn  Fate's  moves  into 
gains  when  we  can,  and  learn  from  our  losses  to  play 
better  in  the  future.  But  let  us  guard  against  the 
temptation,  subtle  and  strong  to  our  inertness  and  to 
our  vanity,  of  thinking,  or  pretending  to  think,  that  we 
always  gain.  Making  the  best  of  things  is  intelligent 
and  dignified,  it  is,  above  all,  practical ;  but  beyond 
this  begins  the  uncouth  folly  of  depreciating  advan- 
tages which  we  must  forego  or  denying  reverses  which 
we  have  to  sustain.  To  say  systematically  "  Yes  "  to 
the  evils  of  life  would  not  only  break  the  fruitful 
continuity  of  similarity  and  sympathy,  but  mar  the 
individual's  energy,  and  jumble  the  individual's 
instincts.  It  would  be  a  poor  beginning  for  a  Super- 
Man  to  start  with  sensibilities  so  complacent,  or 
illusions  so  complete,  that  other  men's  poison  should 
become  his  natural  meat  ;  and  it  would  condemn  him, 
in  the  long  run,  to  receive  of  the  life  he  thus  stupidly 
accepted  only  the  poisonous  refuse.  'Tis  a  poor  result 
of  moralising  to  affirm  that  black  is  white,  loss  no  loss, 
suffering  no  suffering  ;  one  feels  it  in  all  Stoicism  from 
Epictetus  down  to  Maeterlinck,  and  in  all  religious 
mysticism  which  insists  on  the  goodness  of  a  humanly 
good  God.  And  if,  following  Nietzsche's  example, 
we  lay  ruthlessly  analytic  hands  upon  the  latest  expres- 


182  NIETZSCHE  AND 

sion  of  this  venerable  and  indisputable  piece  of  con- 
ventional morality,  we  shall  find  in  the  Zarathustrian 
precept,  of  "  not  merely  enduring,  but  loving  the 
inevitable,"  something  worse  than  the  mere  weakness 
and  insincerity  which  are  at  the  bottom  of  all  the  other 
embodiments  of  this  particular  "  vital  lie."  For,  as 
the  really  difficult  attitude  towards  life  would  be  the 
simple,  straightforward  one  of  seeing  it  lucidly  and 
feeling  normally  towards  it,  of  hating  its  evil  in  pro- 
portion as  we  cherish  its  good,  of  continuing  in  our 
consciousness  the  great  work  of  selection  with  a 
resolute  "No"  as  well  as  a  resolute  "Yes";  as  this 
would  evidently  be  the  attitude  requiring  perhaps 
almost  superhuman  strength  and  displaying  almost 
superhuman  dignity,  there  comes  to  be  an  element 
of  positive  vulgarity  in  the  swagger  of  Zarathustra, 
shouting  his  "  Yes  "  to  the  eternally  recurring  cycle 
of  the  universe's  intolerable  evils.  Nay,  worse  than 
this ;  is  there  not  in  these  Zarathustrian  antics  of 
"  laughter  and  dancing "  in  the  face  of  the  most 
desolating  of  all  nightmare  conceptions  of  the  universe, 
•and  in  this  ugly  misapplication  of  the  high  and  happy 
word  "  love "  to  the  object  of  hatred,  is  there  not 
in  all  this  famous  "Yes,"  a  virtual  "No"  to  every- 
thing natural,  sane  in  spirit,  nay,  healthy  in  body  ? 


VII 


Can  this  be  the  great  gift  for  which  Nietzsche  is 
evermore  preparing  us  ?  Is  it  in  favour  of  this  that 
we  are  told  to  destroy  all  long-established  systems  and 


THE  "WILL  TO   POWER 


183 


valuations?  for  this  that  we  are  to  purify  the  world 
and  our  souls  by  ruthlessness,  by  "  deliberate  cruelty  " 
towards  others  and  ourselves  ?  for  this  that  the  hills 
are  to  be  levelled  and  the  valleys  raised  up  by  methods 
not  of  engineering  but  of  earthquake  ?  Not  in  reality. 
For,  more  than  in  any  other  philosopher,  we. become 
aware  that  there  is  in  Nietzsche's  mind  something 
round  which  his  system  has  grown,  but  which  is  far 
more  essential  and  vital  to  him  than  his  system  :  some- 
thing continually  alluded  to,  constantly  immanent, 
round  which  he  perpetually  hovers,  into  which  he 
frequently  plunges,  on  whose  bank  he  erects  meta- 
physical edifices,  lets  off  fireworks  of  epigrams,  sets 
holocausts  ablaze  and  sings  magnificent  dithyrambs  ; 
but  which  remains  undefined,  a  vague  //.  Such  an 
ineffable  central  mystery  exists  in  the  thought  of  many 
philosophers,  and  perhaps  of  all  mystics  (for  Nietzsche 
is  a  mystic)  ;  a  whirlpool  explaining  everything,  but 
never  itself  explained  ;  called,  as  the  case  may  be, 
"  Higher  Law,"  "  Truth,"  "  Good,"  sometimes  merely 
"  Nature,"  and,  in  the  remoter  Past,  most  frequently 
called  by  the  name  of  "  God."  It  is  one  of  Nietzsche's 
finest  and  profoundest  achievements  that  he  has,  once 
or  twice,  called  this  transcending  //  by  a  new,  surpris- 
ing and,  methinks,  a  correct  name,  "  My  Taste." 

In  Nietzsche's  case,  indeed,  more  perhaps  than  in 
that  of  any  other  philosopher,  the  living  nucleus  of  all 
his  teaching  is  not  a  thought,  but  an  emotional  con- 
dition, organic  and  permanent.  Under  all  the  argu- 
ments which  have  grown  out  of  it,  under  all  the  facts 
and  theories  attracted  to  it  like  iron  filings  to  a  magnet, 
out  of  the  refuse  of  old  and  the  mess  of  new  doctrines, 


184  NIETZSCHE  AND 

there  is,  if  we  look  carefully  enough,  a  chronic  irrita- 
tion and  throbbing  :  "  I  dislike,"  "  I  hate,"  "  I  am 
made  uncomfortable,"  "  I  am  incompatible,"  "  I  want 
.to  get  rid,"  "I  want  to  destroy,"  "I  want  to  be  alone," 
"  I  want  room  for  my  soreness  and  swelling."  The 
hypertrophied,  hypersensitive  ego,  which  cannot  endure 
the  contact  of  life,  the  presence  of  others  and  other 
things  ;  the  sick  ego,  in  its  feverish  shiftings  and 
feverish  all-overishness,  capable  of  convulsive  efforts 
passing  the  powers  of  health,  incapable  at  the  same 
time  of  the  most  normal  and  every-day  endurance ; 
such  is,  I  think,  the  living  core  of  Nietzsche's  doctrines. 
And  the  various  transcending  messages  he  feels  that  he 
must  bring,  the  great  efforts  of  destruction  and  re- 
construction he  must  accomplish,  everything  in  short 
which  he  feels  to  be  superhuman  in  himself,  are  merely 
the  delusive  birth-throes,  they  are  the  massive,  yet 
pervading  pain  of  a  soul  which  distorts  and  magnifies 
all  things  to  the  measure  of  its  discomfort.  We  have 
seen  how  his  "  Will  to  Power,"  remaining  consciously 
such,  fails  to  metamorphose  itself  into  those  desires  for 
the  not-ego,  into  that  striving  after  the  external-to- 
oneself,  into  that  thinking  and  feeling  of  the  outside 
world,  which  is  the  process  of  exteriorisation  of  the 
subject  into  the  object,  normal  and  necessary  in  every 
healthy  soul.  We  have  seen  similarly  how,  despite  his 
extraordinary  genius,  the  vastness  of  the  universe  and 
its  complexity  and  vigour  of  life  entirely  escaped 
Nietzsche,  until  the  world  shrank  to  being  little  more 
for  him  than  an  inert,  almost  counterfeit,  stage  filled 
up  by  his  own  imaginary  size  and  strength  ;  the  co- 
operation of  every  kind  of  existence,  the  give  and  take 


THE   "WILL  TO   POWER"  185 

of  past  and  present,  the  ceaseless  act  of  assimilation 
and  reproduction,  and  their  culmination  in  the 
immortally  living  human  work,  all  this  accessory, 
organic,  endless  and  endless  complex  activity  becoming 
replaced  in  his  mind  by  the  puny  deed  of  volition  of  a 
mere  individual  Super-Man.  Nay,  we  have  seen  how 
he  gravely  asserted  that  this  microscopic  human  detail 
could  actually  accept  with  a  pompous  "  Yes "  the 
inevitable  course  of  life  universal,  of  which  he,  his 
thought  and  volition,  are  but  as  the  minutest  bubble 
of  froth  ;  and  we  have  seen  also  how  this  supposed 
"  '  Yes  '  to  life  "  is  in  reality,  and  more  than  in  any  of 
the  old  ascetic  doctrines,  a  "  No  "  to  the  most  strongly 
organised  preferences  and  repulsions  of  the  normal 
soul. 

For  Nietzsche,  through  the  purely  intellectual  and 
often  inherited  parts  of  whose  work  we  can  trace  the 
thread  of  that  autobiographical  philosophy  he  so 
greatly  prized,  gave  with  unerring  truth  the  formula 
of  his  temperament.  "  A  pleasure  in  saying  *  No,'  a 
certain  deliberate  ruthlessness."  The  "  No,"  a  "  No  " 
of  his  whole  unhappy  organism,  exists  not  merely  in 
this  element  of  destructiveness  ;  but  even  more  subtly 
and  characteristically  in  that  sense  of  almost  bodily 
disgust  (Eke I)  which  the  contact  of  his  fellow-men,  of 
their  thoughts  and  feelings,  arouses  in  him,  with 
significant  metaphors  of  "  lack  of  air  "  and  "  filthy 
smell."  Even  more  than  that  titillation  of  tearing  and 
breaking  perpetually  in  Nietzsche's  fingers,  there  is 
the  unmistakable  evidence  of  disease  in  this  constant 
spiritual  nausea  in  Nietzsche's  mouth.  The  two 
together  mean  that  this  man,  so  splendidly  endowed 


i86 


NIETZSCHE   AND 


;  in  intellect,  was  so  unhappily  constituted  as  to  receive 
mainly  painful  impressions  from  the  totality  of  his 
surroundings.  I  think  I  am  justified  in  saying 

'  "  mainly  painful  impressions,"  despite  the  occasional 
praise  which  Nietzsche  bestows  upon  classic  literature, 
remote  Alpine  fastnesses,  southern  clearness  and 
radiance,  and  more  particularly  upon  certain  music 
— Bizet's,  especially,  and  (partly  from  contradictoriness 
to  the  Wagnerians)  Mozart's.  For  such  evidences  of 
pleasure  from  outer  things  are  not  only  rare,  but  they 
are  never  fused  into  any  kind  of  pervading  mood  of 
gladness,  of  appreciation  and  gratitude  towards  the 
outer  world.  He  has,  indeed,  put  into  words  his 
incapacity  of  feeling  anything  save  the  fewest  and  most 
far-between  impressions  of  the  goodness  of  things,  and 
expressed  the  mass  of  discontented,  depreciating  self- 
assertion  in  which  these  rare  appreciative  impressions 
were  set.  For  such  is  the  meaning,  as  indicative  of 

I  Nietzsche's  personality,  of  that  famous  phrase  about 
Jr"the   glance   of  the   true   philosopher,    "  which    rarely] 

)  admires,  rarely  looks  up,  rarely  loves." 

Let  us  think  what  that  means  ;  and,  particularly, 
what  is  contained  in  that  boast  of  rarely  loving.  And 
in  this  last  item,  especially,  the  secret  of  Nietzsche's 
nature  is  out.  One  guesses  it  many  times,  but  perhaps 
nowhere  in  his  works  is  it  so  strongly  suggested  as  in 
a  certain  beautiful  chapter  of  "  Zarathustra."  He 
shows  himself  in  it  surrounded  by  all  the  beauty  of 
life,  all  the  tenderness  of  life,  and  by  the  majestic 
fact  of  life's  eternal  renovation  ;  and  he  shows  himself, 
at  the  same  time,  without  the  smallest  thrill  of 
emotional  recognition,  without  the  faintest  sense  of 


THE   "WILL  TO   POWER"  187 

being  a  part  of  it,  without  the  faintest  longing  to  merge 
himself  therein,  to  take  it  in,  to  give  himself  to  it, 
without  a  trace  of  the  universal  instinct  to  assimilate,  to 
be  renovated,  to  add  to  it  in  one's  turn.  He  shows  him- 
self separate,  unmoved,  impervious,  unaltered,  solitary, 
sterile.  The  reason  why  Nietzsche  will  always  remain 
inferior  to  other  thinkers,  from  Plato  and  Lucretius  to 
Spinoza  and  Schopenhauer,  is  that,  for  all  his  talk  of 
"  loving  the  inevitable,"  the  man  has  no  experience 
of  the  fact  of  love.  I  do  not  speak  of  love  of  human 
beings.  Not  to  know  that  is  certainly  a  lack  and 
limitation,  but  there  are  lacks  and  limitations  far 
deeper  and  graver  still  than  that:  not  to  unite  in 
thought  and  feeling  with  the  thought  and  feeling  of 
which  the  world  is  full ;  not  to  appreciate,  not  to 
admire,  not  to  reverence  ;  not  to  unite  in  joy  with 
what  is  lovely,  in  reverence  with  what,  in  man  and 
nature,  is  powerful ;  nay,  not  to  unite  in  the  fruitful 
struggle  of  hatred  with  what  is  hateful. 

But  Nietzsche's  Super-Man  was  to  say  "  Yes  "  to  the 
whole  of  life,  "  to  love  the  inevitable  " — that  which, 
as  he  himself  explained,  most  human  beings  could 
scarcely  endure.  He  was  to  love  rarely ;  or  more 
correctly  speaking — for  those  who  have  the  power  o 
loving  must  needs  love  whenever  there  is  occasion,  an 
the  occasion  is  not  rare,  but  common — he  was  not 
love,  in  the  word's  real  sense,  at  all. 

Haunted,  hag-ridden,  by  the  sense  of  his  own  sore 
and  struggling  ego,  Nietzsche,  true  to  the  autobio- 
graphical instincts  which  he  discovered  in  all  philosophic 
systematising,  made  life  synonymous  with  that  ego's 
realisation  and  assertion.  "Give,"  he  wrote  in  one  of 


i88  NIETZSCHE  AND 

his  latest  and  finest  works,  "  Give  me,  ye  Gods, 
give  me  madness !  madness  to  make  me  believe  at 
last  in  myself."  But  in  this  world  of  intuitive  and 
imitative  action,  of  reflex-like  instincts  implanted 
inextricably  deep  below  consciousness,  there  is  no  need 
for  special  self-belief  or  self-assertion  ;  or,  rather,  self- 
belief  and  self-assertion  are  bound  to  exist,  to  push,  to 
act,  to  speak,  everywhere  and  in  everything,  whether 
they  be  conscious  or  not  :  they  are  implicit  in  every 
desire  and  every  energy.  The  realisation  of  one's  own 
ego  is — even  when  it  is  not  the  fly's  self-realisation  on 
the  coach  wheel — the  most  unnecessary  epiphenomenon  ; 
nay,  the  least  fruitful  exercise  of  an  idle  dilettanteism. 
Believe  in  oneself !  Why  is  it  not  enough  that  we 
{  believe  in  the  objects  of  our  love  and  our  hate,  in  the 

1  aims  of  our   impulses  and   actions  ?     And   does   life 

depend  upon  the  fiat  of  individual  self-realisation  ? 
What  is  this  childish  trifling  about  saying  "  '  Yes '  to 
life,"  about  loving  the  inevitable  ?  Man,  the  inevitable 
can  do  without  your  approval !  And  Life  has  you  safe 
in  its  clutches,  Life,  Death — and  the  madness  you 
invoked,  also. 

VIII 

Why  have  we  spent  so  much  time — which  would 
have  sufficed  to  collect  a  volume  of  sane  and  useful 
sayings  out  of  Nietzsche's  work — upon  the  analysis  of 
his  unhappy,  morbid  and  sterile  personality  ?  Partly 
because,  in  the  universal  and  necessary  reconsideration 
of  all  our  previous  habits  of  belief  and  standards  of 
conduct,  the  imitation  of  Nietzsche's  attitude  con- 


THE   "WILL  TO   POWER"  189 

stitutes  a  real,  though  a  momentary,  danger  to  some  of 
us.  But  partly,  also,  because  the  attitude  of  Nietzsche 
suggests  in  its  main  characteristics,  and  helps  us  to 
construct  even  in  some  of  its  details,  an  attitude  towards 
the  universe  of  an  exactly  contrary  nature.  In  analysing 
the  sham  "  Yes  "  which  this  passionate  No-Sayer  flung 
in  the  face  of  the  life  he  had  stripped  of  all  living 
quality,  we  may  have  been  led  to  conceive  a  more 
genuine  "  Yes  "  addressed  to  a  more  real  life.  And  ' 
thus  we  may  have  come  to  reverse  the  prayer  of 
Nietzsche,  and  to  exclaim,  in  humility  and  confidence  : 
"  Give  us,  ye  Gods,  Sanity  :  so  that  we  may  believe 
in  all  which  is  not  merely  our  own  self." 


PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND  THE  "WILL 
TO    BELIEVE" 


PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND   THE    "WILL  TO 
BELIEVE  " 


THE  need  to  believe.  That  is  the  title  which,  in 
my  mind,  I  find  I  give  to  these  subtle,  brilliant, 
delicate,  violent,  and  altogether  delightful  and  intoler- 
able essays  of  Professor  William  James.  The  "  will 
to  believe,"  he  himself  has  entitled  them  and  the  main 
subject  they  treat  of:  as  a  lesser  apologist,  some 
years  ago,  had  called  a  similar  book  the  "  Wish  to 
Believe." 

The  wish)  the  will  to  believe  —  suggestive  enough 
titles  certainly.  But,  if  I  may  paraphrase  Faust's  com- 
mentary on  St.  John  :  in  the  beginning,  before  the  wish, 
or  the  will,  there  was  something  else  ;  in  the  beginning 
was  the  need.  The  need  to  believe  —  that  is  to  say,  a 
given  mental  constitution,  typical  like  all  others,  whose 
spontaneous  and  inevitable  tendencies  have  been  re- 
inforced by  such  portion  of  its  surroundings  as  it 
found  akin  to  itself.  But,  at  that  rate,  what  about 
truth  —  abstract  truth  ?  Surely  we  all  of  us  want  to 
get  at  that.  Of  course  we  all  do,  and  each  of  us 
more  than  every  one  else.  But  abstract  truth  has  to 


I93 


194  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

be  sought  for  by  methods,  to  be  sought  for,  moreover, 
in  one  direction  or  another  ;  and  these  methods  and 
this  direction  depend,  in  things  spiritual  more 
particularly,  upon  our  intimate  constitutional  habits, 
and  represent  that  need  to  believe,  or  not  to  believe, 
one  sort  of  thing  rather  than  another  ;  the  need  which, 
as  remarked,  must  come  before  the  wish  or  the  will. 
This  is  prejudging  the  question.  Yes  ;  but  prejudging 
it  equitably.  For,  while  postulating  on  the  part  of 
Professor  James  a  constitutional  need  to  believe,  of 
which  his  arguments  are  mere  explanations  and  excuses, 
I  admit  from  the  first  that  a  corresponding  need  not  to 
believe  (that  is,  not  to  believe  the  same  as  Professor 
James),  and  even  a  will  not  to  believe,  is  at  the  bottom 
of  the  counter-arguments  with  which  I  shall  endeavour 
to  oppose  him.  Indeed,  the  whole  small  usefulness 
of  the  following  notes  depends,  in  my  eyes,  on  their 
embodying  a  picture  of  the  type  of  mind  which  does 
not  need  to  believe,  to  set  opposite  Professor  James's 
incidentally  drawn  portrait  of  the  mind  which  does 
need  to  believe  ;  and  this  for  the  benefit  of  that 
unbiassed  abstract  reader  who  exists  only  in  the  average 
(and  perhaps  not  even  there),  and  for  the  better  setting 
forth  of  what  I  hold  to  be  a  great  and  consolatory  fact, 
to  wit,  that  there  are  luckily  a  great  variety  of  human 
types,  and  a  good  many  ways  of  working  out  one's 
spiritual  welfare,  of  being  saved  in  life,  if  not  after 
death. 

This  being  the  case,  and  Professor  James's  arguments 
seeming  to  me  only  modernised  versions  of  what  has 
been  alleged  ever  since  the  beginning  of  such  con- 
troversies, I  need  make  no  excuses  for  the  venerable 


THE   "WILL   TO   BELIEVE"  195 

staleness  of  my  counter-arguments.  For  when,  as  in 
this  particular  case,  it  is  a  great  Goliath  of  Science  who 
comes  forward  with  newly  furbished  weapons  from  the 
old  orthodox  armoury,  it  is  no  disgrace  to  the  poor 
David  of  Ignorance  to  fill  his  sling,  not  with  smooth 
pebbles  from  the  brook,  but  with  a  handful  of  rusty 
rationalistic  shot. 


II 


There  enters,  according  to  Professor  James's  title 
(and  I  am  not,  I  hope,  misunderstanding  him  in  saying 
according  also  to  Professor  James's  ideas),  something 
into  belief  besides  the  evidence  and  the  logical  process 
of  which,  according  to  old-fashioned  notions,  belief  was 
exclusively  composed.  Or  rather,  belief  is  the  out- 
come of  something  which  our  dogmatising  fathers 
who  believed  exclusively  in  the  intellect  (because 
they  denied  that  their  adversaries  had  any)  allowed 
only  as  an  ingredient  and  factor  of  variation  in  error. 
A  kindlier  disposition  towards  our  opponents,  and  a 
more  rigorous  scrutiny  of  our  own  mental  processes, 
has  led  us  moderns  to  perceive  that  logical  proof 
and  ocular  demonstration  are  not  much  more  than 
negative  powers,  and  that  a  stronger  motor  than  they 
is  needed  to  set  a-going  the  lazy  and  much  impeded 
mechanism  of  human  belief.  This  is  one  of  the  great 
achievements  of  modern  mental  science  ;  and  its  con- 
vincing elucidation  is  one  of  the  finest  successes  of 
Professor  James's  own  splendid  work  in  Psychology. 

Belief  in  the  existence  of  anything  is  primarily  set 
afoot  by  a  practical  or  emotional  requirement ;  and  it 


196  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

is  only  far,  far  on  in  intellectual  development  (and  even 
there  only  pushed  by  pleasurable  impulses  to  ransack 
facts  or  construct  theories)  that  we  meet  with  ideas, 
with  beliefs,  existing  for  their  own  sake  and  born  solely 
of  other  ones.  But  primarily,  as  I  said,  we  believe  in 
a  thing  because  we  feel  in  some  way  that  tends  towards 
it :  we  set  about  looking  for  water  not  because  certain 
aspects  of  the  place  afford  an  intellectual  persuasion  of 
its  presence,  but  because  we  want  to  drink  it ;  and  the 
intellectual  element  of  evidence  and  logic  (disregarded 
so  long  as  we  are  not  thirsty)  comes  in  only  to  direct 
or  to  check  this  incipient  belief,  this  conception  pro- 
duced by  desire.  The  psychological  theory  of  belief 
was  formulated  centuries  ago  (though  not  by  a  philo- 
sopher), in  the  adage  about  wishes  being  horses.  In 
the  earlier  stage  belief  is  indistinguishable  from  ex- 
pectation, and  expectation  (as  we  know  from  infants' 
proceedings  about  food  and  grown-up  people's  views 
about  the  duties  of  others)  is  merely  a  conceptional 
wish,  frequently  not  merely  independent  of  reality, 
but  absolutely  hostile  to  it.  This  is  the  first  stage. 
The  beggars  of  the  old  adage  raise  their  foot  into 
the  stirrup,  and  up  !  but  alas,  no  horses  are  there 
to  bestride  !  The  child  eagerly  bites  into  a  sweet, 
delicious  orange,  and  (forgive  my  vulgarity)  spits  out 
a  very  sour  lemon.  We  all  of  us  go  to  our  neigh- 
bour clamouring  for  sympathy  and  assistance,  and  find 
that  our  neighbour  takes  a  different  view,  and  has  his 
own  affairs  to  look  after.  The  result  of  such  experi- 
ence, of  the  beggar's  attempt  to  ride,  is  a  modifica- 
tion of  the  belief  which  is  a  kind  of  desire  into  the 
more  complex  sort  of  belief  which,  as  often  as  not, 


THE   "WILL   TO   BELIEVE"  197 

runs  counter  thereunto.  The  experience,  being  usually 
disagreeable,  is  supplemented  or  replaced,  by  what 
we  call  logic,  which  dispenses  us  from  biting  into 
fruit  which  may  be  sour,  clamouring  for  sympathy 
which  may  be  refused,  and  generally,  like  those 
beggars,  getting  a  bad  fall  off  imaginary  horses. 
Experience  and  logic,  at  any  rate,  modify  our  concep- 
tions ;  and  such  modified  conceptions  are  what  we 
mean  when,  in  any  scientific  or  practical  way,  we  speak 
of  belief.  Moreover,  it  is  such  belief  as  this  upon 
which,  from  a  wholesome  fear  of  accidents,  we  usually 
try  to  base  our  actions.  In  this  manner  does  impulse 
— the  impulse,  if  we  may  call  it  so,  of  prudence — 
stimulate  our  lazy  minds  and,  inducing  us  to  modify 
our  expectations  by  knowledge,  counteract  the  previous 
impulse  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  everything  we 
want. 

Such  is  the  platitudinous  history  of  the  formation 
of  belief,  in  those  practical  matters  where  certainty  is 
necessary  and  attainable.  Now  this  alteration  of 
expectation  by  actuality,  this  rude  elimination  of  the 
element  of  mere  personal  desire  out  of  what  we  call 
belief,  does  most  conspicuously  not  take  place  in  one 
of  beliePs  chief  categories,  and  (by  a  curious  coinci- 
dence) in  the  very  category  which  has  usurped  the 
name  without  further  qualifications.  In  matters  reli- 
gious and  philosophical  (which  are  so  largely  the  same 
under  different  titles),  wishes  really  do  become  horses  ; 
at  all  events,  every  beggar  contrives  to  enjoy  a  ride, 
whether  on  Pegasus  or  a  stickhorse  only  he  himself 
is  left  to  judge.  We  are  all  of  us,  either  individually 
or  grouped  into  creeds  and  schools,  allowed  in  such 


198  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

matters  as  God,  the  Soul,  Immortality,  and  all  the 
transcendent  questions,  to  express  our  preferences  and 
our  requirements  as  we  should  never  dare  express  them 
in  physics  or  chemistry,  or  the  most  rudimentary 
housewife's  science.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that 
we  could  not  boil  an  egg  without  a  severe  elimination 
of  the  personal  element  of  consideration  of  wish  and 
will,  and  needs  of  our  nature — such  as  is  never  applied 
to  religious  and  philosophical  beliefs.  This  difference 
shows,  as  apologists  have  often  remarked,  that  belief  in 
things  spiritual  conforms  to  different  rules  from  belief 
in  things  temporal.  And  therein  I  agree  completely. 
But  if  religious  thought  can  thus  dispense  with  the 
kind  of  certainty  required  even  for  the  simplest 
practical  affairs,  this  must  surely  be  only  because  no 
practical  decisions  are  really  based  upon  it ;  because 
it  is  not  a  means  to  an  end,  but  an  end,  even  like  art, 
in  itself.  The  persistence  in  all  views  on  spiritual 
matters,  of  that  element  of  desire,  nay,  of  every  indi- 
vidual and  momentary  feeling  which  has  been  elimi- 
nated from  more  material  kinds  of  belief,  shows  that 
such  views  are  useful  not  as  a  basis  for  action,  but  as 
an  expression  and  embodiment  of  emotional  and  con- 
structive impulses  inherent  in  what  we  may  call  the 
soul.  Such  a  view  is  no  disparagement  to  religion  ; 
if  anything,  the  contrary.  There  are  activities,  surely, 
which,  instead  of  merely  stoking,  so  to  speak,  for  the 
maintenance  of  themselves  and  of  other  activities,  are 
advantageous  to  life  by  increasing  and  regulating  its 
complexities ;  nay,  which  perhaps  constitute,  in  the 
eyes  of  a  rational  human  being,  life's  only  worthy  end 
and  object.  To  despise  such  activities  is  the  equivalent, 


THE   "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  199 

on  the  psychologist's  part,  of  a  certain  kind  of  political 
economy,  preaching  abstinence  from  all  the  good  which 
wealth  can  buy  for  the  sake  of  increasing  that  wealth 
itself,  which,  apart  from  its  use,  can  have  no  meaning. 

If,  therefore,  will  can  enter  into  belief,  it  is  only,  to 
my  mind,  as  an  expression  of  need,  of  the  craving  of 
this  part  of  our  constitution.  And  in  so  far  as  the 
needs  of  different  men  differ,  and  the  needs  of  different 
historical  periods  and  racial  types  differ  still  more,  it 
is  not  surprising  that  while  science  and  the  practical 
applications  thereof  have  tended  to  that  ever  greater 
unity  which  we  associate  with  the  notion  of  objective 
truth,  the  creations  of  the  religious  instinct,  the  expres- 
sions of  the  will  not  to  know,  nor  to  succeed,  but  to 
believe,  have  been  as  various  as  the  product  of  the 
aesthetic  faculties. 

I  am  not  speaking  disrespectfully  of  religious 
thought,  in  saying  that  it  is  far  less  akin  to  science 
than  to  art,  indeed,  in  its  highest  manifestation,  perhaps 
merely  a  category  of  the  assthetic  phenomenon  ;  for  as 
I  do  not  agree  with  Professor  James  that  the  assthetic 
sensibility  is  an  accident  in  evolution  like  the  capacity 
for  sea-sickness,  I  am  not  bound  (although  I  have  no 
will  to  believe']  to  agree  with  another,  non-unitarian 
psychologist,  that  "  religion  is  a  malady  of  the  soul." 

Indeed,  when  I  come  to  think  of  it,  it  seems  as  if 
I  had  more  sympathy  with  religious  people  instead  of 
less,  just  because  I  disbelieve  in  religion's  objective 
validity  or  value  :  at  all  events,  my  sympathies  are  less 
restricted  than  those  of  the  various  religious  persons 
themselves,  High  Church,  Low  Church,  Anglican, 
Roman,  follower  of  AH  and  follower  of  Omar,  nay  even 


200  PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND 

(I  fear)  of  Professor  James  himself,  who  lays  about  him 
freely  against  the  excessive  demands  of  Catholics  and 
Calvinists,  the  insufficient  demands  of  agnostics — in  fact 
against   everybody   who    is    not    of  his   own   way  of 
thinking.     If  desire,  suitability  to  one's  own  feelings 
(which  I  take  to  be  the  meaning  of  "moral  coherence"), 
enters  into  religious  belief ;  why  then  there  must  enter 
into  it  the  temperamental  peculiarities  and  the  peculi- 
arities of  civilisation  by  which  these  non-logical  de- 
mands are  differentiated  from  each  other  ;  and  if  truth 
is  to  result  from  it  all,  why  insist  that  only  one  view 
can  be  true — or  rather,  why  not  insist  that  to  himself 
each  single  individual  must  necessarily  be  in  the  right  ? 
Once   admit   a   will  to   believe,  and    the   divergences 
between,  say,  the  God  of  the  Hebrews  (Patriarchs  and 
Prophets  indiscriminately)  and    the    God   of   Marcus 
Aurelius,   and   the  God   of  Dante,  and   the   God    of 
Emerson,  must  be  as  legitimate  and  as  significant  of 
truth   as   the   coincidences    between    them.       Neither 
should  Professor  James  warn    us  against   going   into 
excessive  detail  about  the  Divinity  and  admonish  us 
to  be  satisfied,  so  to  speak,  with  the  Divinity  being 
there  at  all.     Professor  James,  indeed,  is  satisfied  with 
God  being  there,  and  perhaps  being  there  to  satisfy 
Professor  James  ;  but  that  would  not  at  all  suffice  for 
Dante,  who  wanted  a  God  to  apply  filthy  chastisements 
for   sins   he    "  did   not    feel    inclined    to "  ;    nor   for 
Cardinal  Newman,  who  wanted  a  God  to  set  afoot  a 
world  capable  of  Original  Sin  and  Redemption  ;   nor 
for  the  poor  old  woman  who  wants  a  God  able  to  take 
pleasure  in  a  twopenny  taper. 

And  why  should  we  sympathise  less  with  all  these 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  201 

divergent  religious  needs  than  with  those  of  Professor 
William   James  ?      Only,    because   we    happen    to    be 
nearer  his  general  way  of  thinking,  because  we  happen 
to  admire  him  enormously,  while  we  are  indifferent  to 
the  Eternal  Punishment  of  Gluttons  (as  set  forth  by 
Dante),  to  Original  Sin  (as  understood  by  Newman), 
and  to  cheap  wax  lights  (as  regarded  by  the  devout 
old  lady).     And  here  let  me  say  that,  unless  we  con- 
sider all  religions  as  equally  a  nuisance  (and  perhaps 
even  if  we  do  so  consider  them),  it  would  surely  be 
more    consistent,   kinder,    and    therefore   better   bred, 
more  wholesome  for  our  own  spiritual  life,  such  as  it 
may  be,  if  we   could    get  to  speak   and    even    think 
respectfully  of  the  sincere  and  disinterested  elements  in 
every  kind  of  belief.     Agnosticism  can  afford  to  be 
fairer  to  Romanism  than  Protestants  can  be,  fairer  to 
Calvinism  than  it  is  possible  for  Ritualists,  more  decent 
to  each  and  every  honest  and  beautiful  faith  than  any 
other  honest  and  beautiful  faith  is  wont  to  be.     I  may 
claim  even  more  for  the  attitude  towards  various  reli- 
gious faiths  of  those  who  can  dispense  with  any,  for 
the  thorough-paced  agnostic.    Since,  should  there  really 
exist,  immanent  and  hidden  in  this  world  of  phenomena, 
of  humanly  perceived  and  interpreted  appearances,  an 
Ens  Realissimum  in  any  way  resembling  the  creatures 
who  worship  and  burn,  turn  about,  the  images  they 
have  made  of  him,  if  there  be  such  an  One — is  it  not 
justifiable  to  suppose  that,  having  created  such  various 
moral   soils   and    climates   and   germs,    the   unknown 
First  Cause  might  love  to  watch  the  different  growths 
of  soul,    and   cherish   the   diversity   of    his    spiritual 
garden  ? 


202  PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND 


III 


But  these  are  the  scruples  of  a  determinist,  whose 
individual  fate  it  is  to  have  no  will  to  believe  the  same 
things  as  Professor  James. 

He,  on  the  other  hand,  who  does  will  to  believe,  has 
rather  a  complicated  arrangement  to  make,  which,  to 
the  best  of  my  power,  I  desire  to  understand  and  put 
before  the  reader  fairly.  There  is — such  is  the  pith 
of  the  arguments — there  is  of  course  a  non-rational 
element  existing  quite  legitimately  in  belief:  the  indi- 
vidual believer  has  an  individual  constitution,  and  this 
has  got  individual  needs,  tendencies,  impulses,  repul- 
sions, desires.  But — and  in  this  but  is  the  whole 
morality  and  philosophy  of  the  business — but  these 
constitutional,  hence  inevitable,  fatal  needs,  are  only 
reasons  among  which  the  will  chooses.  And  the  will, 
which  makes  the  choice,  is  overruled,  determined  by 
none  of  these  inevitable  motives,  is  independent  of  the 
individual  constitution ;  it  promenades  its  glance, 
poising  freely  in  vacua,  upon  the  whole  series  of  in- 
evitable tendencies  ;  and  it  makes  its  choice  freely. 
Hence  it  would  seem  that,  so  far  from  the  Will  to 
believe  being,  as  I  have  represented  it,  a  Need  to  believe  ; 
the  Will  to  Believe  can  exist  even  where  there  is  a 
constitutional  need  NOT  to  believe.  And  by  this 
arrangement  we  are  all  responsible  for  our  beliefs,  since 
we  are  responsible  for  our  wills — or  is  it  our  wills 
which  are  responsible  for  us  ? — and  there  is  no  reason 
on  earth  for  being  polite  towards  bigotry  or  scepticism, 
seeing  that  Cardinal  Newman,  M.  Renan,  Professor 


THE   "WILL   TO    BELIEVE"  203 

Clifford,  and  especially  Hegel,  were  perfectly  free  to 
think  differently  from  the  remarkably  reprehensible 
way  in  which  they  did. 

There  is,  therefore,  a  clear  space  round  the  will. 
It  sits  somewhere  in  the  midst  of  motives,  seeing  them 
plainly,  but  quite  safe  from  their  laying  hands  on  it. 
This  would  be  a  curious  position — though  it  has  not 
seemed  an  impossible  one  to  most  persons — for  the 
Will  to  enjoy,  or  rather  for  the  myriads  of  Wills  all 
poised  in  vacua  like  a  spider  in  the  midst  of  a  web 
which  shouldn't  touch  him.  But  the  situation  becomes 
quite  different,  and  the  position  of  the  will  far  less 
conspicuous,  if  we  admit  with  Professor  James  that 
there  is  no  real  reason  for  conceiving  the  isolated  wills 
as  surrounded  by  anything  continuous  in  itself  ;  there 
are  holes  round  the  wills  because  there  are  holes  here, 
there,  and  everywhere.  The  universe  is  no  longer 
homogeneous  in  necessity  of  action  and  reaction  ;  the 
universe  is  honeycombed,  nay  actually  held  in  solution, 
by  a  foreign  something  called  chance.  Even  in  the 
most  trivial  matters,  we  may  watch  the  movements  of 
chance,  and  verify  the  absolute  freedom  of  the  human 
will.  Listen  to  Professor  James  : 

"  Do  not  all  the  motives  that  assail  us,  all  the 
futures  that  offer  themselves  to  our  choice,  spring 
equally  from  the  soil  of  the  Past  ;  and  would  not 
either  one  of  them,  whether  realised  through  chance 
or  through  necessity,  the  moment  it  was  realised,  seem 
to  us  to  fit  that  past,  and  in  the  completest  and  most 
continuous  manner  to  interdigitate  with  the  pheno- 
menon already  there."  The  Past,  for  instance,  has 
led  Professor  James,  as  he  tells  us,  to  the  possibility 


204  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

of  choosing  to  take  one  street  rather  than  the  other. 
He  shows  us  two  separate  and  possible  universes,  one 
in  which  he  has  chosen  the  one  street,  another  in  which 
he  has  chosen  the  other  street  ;  and  asks  which  of  the 
two  is  the  more  rational  universe,  summing  up  the 
demonstration  with  the  remark  :  v'  In  every  outwardly 
verifiable  and  practical  respect,  a  world  in  which  the 
alternatives  that  now  actually  distract  your  choice  were 
decided  by  pure  chance  would  be  by  me  absolutely 
undistinguished  from  the  world  in  which  I  now  live." 
But  that  is  just  it.  There  seems  a  chance,  an  alter- 
native, wherever  we  do  not  see  with  eyes  or  with 
experience  the  totality  of  a  process.  To  me  it  seems 
pure  chance  that  the  omelette  collapses  instead  of 
swelling,  for  I  do  not  see  what  should  make  it  do 
either ;  but  my  cook  knows  and  blushes  for  her 
awkwardness.  In  watching  an  illness,  even  to  a  doctor, 
there  may  seem  to  be  a  chance,  because  the  doctor 
does  not  know  all  that  is  going  on.  That  a  particular 
grain  of  sand  should  have  made  straight  for  Cromwell's 
vitals,  with  the  result  of  killing  him,  seemed  a  matter 
of  chance  to  Pascal,  because  it  was  all  happening  un- 
seen in  another  man's  body  ;  but  had  Pascal  been 
experimenting  in  his  study  with  grains  of  sand  he 
would  not  have  accepted  chance  as  an  explanation. 
Chance  in  fact  is  a  name  for  the  residuum,  for  what 
we  do  not  know  or  do  not  care  about,  and  in  all 
speculations  there  must  be,  perpetually  changing,  such 
a  residuum.  Chance  will  come  in  wherever  we  cease 
to  look  or  fail  to  see  into  a  process.  It  indicates  our 
ignorance  not  merely  of  what  will  happen,  but  of  what 
is  happening.  There  seems  no  sufficient  reason,  more- 


THE   "WILL   TO   BELIEVE"  205 

over,  why,  if  we  admit  chance  as  a  condition  in  the 
act  of  willing,  which  is  one  of  the  most  obscure  and 
entangled  mysteries  of  our  nature,  one  which  observa- 
tion seems  almost  unable  to  arrive  at — we  should  not 
admit  chance  also  as  a  condition  in  the  perfectly  clear 
and  well-known  phenomena  which  lie  under  our  eye. 
Why  should  chance  not  make  the  water  in  a  boiler 
freeze  ?  Yet,  if  such  a  thing  occurred,  we  should 
merely  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  some  new  factor 
of  change  had  come  in  unnoticed  by  us  ;  we  might 
even  say  that  some  saint  or  fairy  had  been  abroad,  and 
that  his  preference  had  upset  the  ways  of  the  elements. 
But  we  should  not  invoke  chance.  Indeed,  in  my 
ignorance  of  science  I  have  an  idea  (perhaps  mistaken) 
that  scientific  experiments  are  sometimes  made,  medical 
diagnosis  for  instance,  on  the  express  exclusion  of  chance  : 
a  substance  put  into  something,  a  mixture  made  inside 
a  pot  or  inside  a  human  being,  and,  according  to  the 
results  given  by  the  new  element,  some  conclusion 
drawn  about  the  previous  contents  of  pot  or  human 
being.  But  I  am  ignorant  of  science,  and  may  be 
mistaken  ;  so  I  will  only  draw  on  literature  for  con- 
firmation, and  remark  that  it  seems  odd  that  even  Pope 
should  have  refused  chance  a  place  in  the  material 
universe  and  relegated  it  to  the  secret  operations  of 
what  were  called  the  faculties  of  the  mind  : 

"And  binding  Nature  fast  in  Fate, 
Left  free  the  Human  Will." 

This  snipping  of  the  web  of  cause  and  effect,  this 
bringing  in  of  independent  factors  from  the  back  of 


2o6  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

beyond,  is  perhaps  a  necessary  conclusion  from  the 
facts  and  tendencies  of  recent  science  ;  of  this  I  am 
too  ignorant  to  judge.  Connected  with  the  will  to 
believe,  it  seems  to  me  (what  such  a  will  to  believe 
surely  authorises)  a  voluntary  result  of  the  old,  old 
theological  dilemma  of  squaring  omnipotence  and  moral 
perfection.  For,  if  God  is  the  first  cause,  God  is  the 
only  cause,  and  the  primary  cause  of  every  secondary 
and  successive  cause  whatsoever.  If  God  made  man, 
and  man  made  mischief,  then  primarily  that  mischief 
was  of  God's  making.  Nor  would  there  have  been 
anything  at  all  shocking  in  this,  if  the  world  had 
contained  only  metaphysicians,  and  religion  had  min- 
istered only  to  a  logical  and  constructive  desire  for  a 
beginning  of  all  things. 

But  the  world  was  peopled  also  with  persons  liable 
to  molest  their  neighbours,  and  with  other  persons 
thus  molested  ;  and  religion  was  also  required  to 
sanction,  by  a  system  of  prohibitions,  of  rewards  and 
of  punishment,  the  practically  indispensable  craving  for 
justice.  For,  by  a  very  natural  contradiction,  mankind 
has  always  acted  as  if  the  individual  will  were  free 
enough  to  be  responsible,  but  determinable  enough  to 
be  influenced  by  threats  and  promises.  Now  it  would 
never  have  done  (as  has  been  formulated  by  M.  Paul 
Bourget's  determinist  villain)  for  men  to  answer  the 
judging  divinity  by  pointing  out  that  he  was  respon- 
sible for  the  very  acts  he  was  about  to  punish.  "  Ihr 
lasst  den  Armen  schuldig  werden  " — at  all  events, 
such  views  were  safe  only  in  philosophical  novels, 
like  Job  and  Wilhelm  Meister. 

Moreover,  besides  the  practical  dangers  which  such 


THE   "WILL   TO    BELIEVE"  207 

a  view  as  this  might  have  entailed,  there  was  the 
emotional  distress  it  must  bring  to  another  class  of 
persons,  who  asked  of  religion  not  the  solution  of  a 
metaphysical  riddle,  nor  the  sanction  of  an  ethical 
policy,  but  something  perhaps  more  indispensable  than 
either,  an  embodied  maximum  of  sympathy,  of  help- 
fulness, of  lovingkindness,  of  a.11  the  beautiful  qualities 
which  mankind  showed  only  in  the  sample.  Some  such 
dilemma  there  must  have  been  in  every  religion  which 
was  more  than  mere  nature  worship  or  less  than  pure 
metaphysics  ;  and  it  would  be  interesting  could  one 
study  the  various  modes  of  eluding  it.  The  best  plan 
was  clearly  to  isolate,  to  prevent  the  clashing,  of  con- 
ceptions of  the  divinity  so  originally  incongruous  as 
the  Metaphysical  First  Cause,  the  Ethical  Judge,  and 
the  emotional  Lover  of  the  Soul.  Christianity  effected 
this  by  the  miraculous  intervention  of  human  free  will 
and  disobedience.  The  miracle  was,  indeed,  far  from 
satisfactory  :  man's  will,  separated,  in  order  to  be 
completely  responsible,  from  all  the  rest  of  causation, 
was  not  logically  controllable  by  a  categorical  impera- 
tive, since  an  imperative,  an  order,  an  enforcement,  is 
inconceivable  towards  a  will  which  is  not  conditioned  ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  very  freedom  of  man's  will 
must  have  been  granted  by  a  First  Cause  who,  if 
omnipotent,  could  have  chosen  to  obviate  so  terrible 
a  danger.  The  solidarity  between  God  and  Evil  still 
existed,  the  responsibility  for  Man's  and  Nature's 
wickedness  had  been  merely  concealed  ;  suspicion,  nay 
certainty  of  this,  growled  through  every  possible  form 
of  disbelief  and  heresy.  But  the  solidarity  had  been 
reduced  to  a  minimum,  the  responsibility  had  been 


208  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

relegated  to  an  infinitely  distant  Past,  and  the  church, 
luckily  perhaps  for  mankind,  decided  that  any  difficulty 
there  might  remain  in  the  matter  was  silenced  by  the 
inscrutability  of  God's  ways  to  man.  Thus  things 
were  pacified  by  the  doctrine  of  Original  Sin,  which 
to  the  rigorously  logical  mind  of  Newman  seemed 
"  almost  as  certain  as  that  the  world  exists  and  as  the 
existence  of  God." 

In  this  way  it  became  possible  for  every  man  to 
cherish  a  personal  divinity,  by  virtually  breaking  up 
the  unity  of  the  monotheistic  idea.  For  in  the  indi- 
vidual conscience  the  total  self-contradictory  Godhead 
exists,  most  probably,  only  in  short  (and  most  often 
painful)  flashes  of  synthesis  ;  from  which  each  indivi- 
dual nature  selects  and  magnifies  those  aspects  which 
answer  to  its  deepest  individual  wants.  A  logical  God 
there  no  doubt  is,  a  perfectly  consistent  First  Cause, 
in  the  thought  of  the  metaphysician  or  theologian, 
untroubled  by  questions  of  sentiment  or  conduct.  The 
whole  Bible,  on  the  other  hand  (save  Job)  and  every 
other  manifestation  of  Puritanism,  past  or  present, 
testifies  to  the  undisturbed  subjective  reign  of  a  God 
of  Righteousness,  from  whom  all  injustice,  however 
logically  demonstrable,  has  been  passionately  purged 
away.  While,  on  the  other  hand,  one  of  the  most 
blessed  sights  in  life  are  the  glimpses  we  get  of  a 
Godhead,  consubstantial  with  so  many  exquisite  human 
hearts,  in  the  perfection  of  whose  goodness  all  evil,  in 
reality  or  in  dogma,  is  dissolved  and  neutralised  away. 
But  the  total  and  definite  divinity,  monstrous  in  absurd 
and  wicked  contradictions,  can  never  have  been  clearly 
discerned  without  horror,  and  has  in  the  practical 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  209 

exercise  of  every  creed  been  invariably  broken  up  or 
hidden  away.  To  say  this  is  no  disrespect,  but  quite 
the  contrary,  to  the  noble  though  discrepant  instincts 
fortuitously  meeting  and  clashing  in  what  we  have 
called  religion.  And,  as  regards,  on  the  other  hand, 
an  objective  primary  Reality,  let  not  anything  I  have 
said  be  construed  into  a  grotesque  judgment  concerning 
the  existence  of  such  a  One.  If,  as  all  philosophical 
progress  unites  in  thinking,  and  as  Kant  has  made  it 
so  easy  for  us  all  to  grasp,  if  it  is  true  that  all  that  we 
know  we  can  know  only  in  the  terms  of  our  senses  and 
our  organic  intellectual  necessities,  then  must  the 
Objective  First  Cause  remain  for  ever  hopelessly  hidden 
from  our  knowledge  and  our  imagination  ;  and  the 
God,  whatsoever  he  be,  whom  we  worship,  we  hope 
for  or  deny,  be  but  an  idol  of  our  own  making,  an 
idol  the  more  potent  that  he  is  a  part  of  ourselves  ; 
but  an  idol  in  judging  of  whose  qualities  and  whose 
possibilities  we  are  only  judging  our  own  thoughts, 
and  desires,  and  dreams  ;  and  the  Objective  Real  Cause 
might,  had  he  qualities  or  form,  rebuke  us  as  the  Spirit 
of  the  Earth  did  Faust : — 

"  Du  gleichst  dem  Geist  den  du  begreifst,  nicht  Mir  !  " 


IV 


The  cruxes  of  theology,  and  theology's  ways  of 
settling  them  are,  as  Mr.  Richard  Le  Gallienne  has 
shown  in  a  small  book  which  is  suggestive  and  charm- 
ing, for  the  most  part  only  the  dilemmas  and  ways 

H 


210  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

out  of  them  of  metaphysics.  But  the  difference 
between  the  thinker  bent  upon  religious  edification, 
and  the  thinker  of  mere  rationalistic  habits,  is  that  the 
latter  is  not  forced  to  attempt  anomalous  unifications 
in  the  person  of  a  divinity.  Professor  James  has  failed 
to  see  this  great  advantage  of  the  Agnostic's  intellectual 
and  moral  position  ;  and,  being  a  Unitarian,  he  declines 
to  hear  of  subjective  divinities  ;  he  wills  to  believe  in 
an  objective  and  substantive  Godhead.  By  construct- 
ing an  elaborate  system  of  air-tight  compartments  filled 
with  Freewill  which  are  connected  with,  but  not  pressed 
upon  by,  surrounding  causality,  he  has  saved  the  unity 
of  the  Creator  by  sacrificing,  very  explicitly,  the  unity 
of  Creation.  And  in  so  doing  he  erroneously  imagines 
that  he  has  attained  the  only  morally  endurable  con- 
ception of  the  relations  of  man  with  what  is  not  man. 
"  If,"  writes  Professor  James  of  his  opponent,  the 
determinist,  "  if  all  he  means  is  that  the  badness  of 
some  parts  does  not  prevent  his  acceptance  of  a  universe 
whose  other  parts  give  him  satisfaction,  I  welcome  him 
(it  is  always  Professor  James  who  speaks)  as  an  ally. 
He  (the  determinist)  has  abandoned  the  notion  of  the 
whole,  which  is  the  essence  of  deterministic  monism, 
and  views  things  as  a  pluralism,  just  as  I  do  in  this 
paper." 

Not  by  any  means,  Professor  James ;  I  can,  as  a 
human  being,  take  exception  to  any  amount  of  things 
in  the  universe  without  in  the  least  postulating  a 
pluralism.  The  fact  of  various  items  being  parts  of 
the  same  whole,  that  is  to  say,  being  bound  to  act  and 
react  on  one  another,  does  not  in  the  least  imply  that 
the  action  and  reaction  in  question  should  be  accom- 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  211 

panied  in  any  of  them  by  the  particular  condition  of 
feeling  called  pleasure  or  approval.  Indeed,  since 
pleasure  and  disapproval  do  undoubtedly  exist,  one 
might  deduce  from  their  existence  the  very  fact  that 
various  items  do  act  and  react  upon  one  another  ;  in 
other  words  that  there  is  an  unbroken  chain  of  causa- 
tion, a  causal  whole  ;  whereas,  if  the  universe  were  full 
of  gaps  in  the  sequence,  approval  and  disapproval  would 
necessarily  be  by  so  far  diminished.  There  is,  there- 
fore, no  pluralistic  view  implied  in  the  recognition  that 
one  tiny  piece  of  the  great  whole,  the  portion  calling 
itself  Man,  is  so  constituted,  and  constituted  in  virtue 
of  the  nature  of  the  whole,  as  to  feel,  to  judge  the 
larger  portion  in  which  it  is  embedded,  according  to 
standards  inevitably  arising  out  of  its  special  constitu- 
tion and  surroundings.  In  synthesising  its  piece  of 
the  universe  according  to  its  synthetic  system,  and 
dividing  that  piece  of  the  universe  into  facts  which 
delight  and  facts  which  revolt  its  special  mode  of  being, 
mankind  is  so  far  from  breaking  up  the  total  unity 
that  its  human  synthesis  and  analysis,  its  repugnance 
and  its  preference,  are  themselves  traceable  to  the  action 
and  reaction  between  itself  and  the  adjacent  parts,  so  to 
speak,  of  that  whole  ;  actions  and  reactions  due,  no 
doubt,  in  their  turn  to  the  actions  and  reactions  of 
infinite  other  parts  which  are  hidden  from  the  faculties 
which  the  whole  has  given  to  that  part  of  itself  called 
mankind,  and  given  thus  limited  and  determined. 

The  very  essence  of  determinism  is  the  belief  that 
man's  likings  and  dislikings,  nay,  his  modalities  of 
perception  and  reasoning,  are  due  to  the  causal  chain 
of  processes  which  have  constituted  him,  which  do 


212  PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND 

constitute  him  man  ;  man,  and  not  horse,  dog,  or  cat  ; 
man,  and  not  tree  or  stone  ;  man,  and  not  angel, 
Demiurgus,  or  God  ;  and  that,  so  far  as  there  is  a 
difference  in  the  determined  constitution,  in  the  deter- 
minating sequence,  man's  likings  and  dislikings  and 
feelings  and  thoughts  are  not  shared  by  horse,  dog, 
cat,  tree,  stone,  angel,  Demiurgus,  or  God. 

Or  God.  Taking  up,  therefore,  the  idol  we  all 
make  and  alter  and  endow  with  that  name,  I  may  say 
that  only  thorough-paced  determinism  can,  it  seems  to 
me,  really  break  that  wretched  solidarity  between  the 
First  Cause,  postulated  by  man's  reason,  and  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Good  demanded  by  man's  heart.  For,  how 
can  we  ask  of  a  First  Cause,  which  our  reason  insists 
on  as  absolutely  unconditioned  (else  it  would  not  be 
First  Cause  at  all)  participating  in  the  moral  instincts 
and  preferences  which  are  involved  in  the  very  nature 
of  man?  And  how,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we, 
because  our  reason  insists  on  the  existence  of  a  bare 
First  Cause,  and  on  the  existence,  moreover,  of  infinite 
realities  necessarily  hidden  from  our  faculties,  which 
perceive  only  what  we  call  phenomena,  why  should  we, 
how  could  we,  silence  those  demands  for  justice,  kind- 
ness, harmony,  which  are  an  inevitable  part  of  our 
constitutions  ?  We  cannot  help  judging  the  Universe, 
we  cannot  help  judging  God,  and  finding  both  at  fault. 
But,  if  we  are  reasonable,  we  cannot  help  at  the  same 
time  recognising  that  the  Universe  and  the  God  we  are 
judging  are  mere  creations  of  our  own  faculties  ;  that 
good  and  evil  as  we  conceive  it,  or  even  good  and  evil 
at  all,  are  qualities  which  exist  for  certain  only  rela- 
tively to  mankind  ;  that  it  is  only  an  exuberance  of 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  213 

an  activity  better  turned  to  the  criticism  of  ourselves, 
which  makes  us  criticise  also  the  creations — perhaps 
the  utterly  gratuitous  creations — of  our  own  human 
mind,  makes  us  rage  at  the  ugliness  of  the  picture  of 
our  painting,  and  sorrow  at  the  cruelty  of  the  idol 
we  have  wrought.  As  to  the  great  Realities,  we 
cannot  fall  foul  of  them,  since  we  cannot  even  conceive 
them.  This  is  the  reconciliation  between  our  reason 
and  our  desires,  which  can  console  such  of  us  as  admit 
the  merely  subjective  nature  of  what  our  religious 
instincts,  harmonious  or  discordant  in  their  action,  are 
for  ever  making  us  hope  and  believe. 

But  the  person  who  wills,  or  needs  to  believe,  in  an 
objective  First  Cause  and  in  an  objective  intention  in 
the  universe  (or  in  part  of  the  universe),  is  liable  to 
think  that  the  morality  of  man  receives  its  principal 
sanction  from  a  similar  morality  on  the  part  of  God. 
To  Professor  James,  it  would  seem,  a  disbelief  in  the 
second  contradicts,  or  largely  invalidates,  a  belief  in 
the  first.  To  me,  on  the  contrary,  it  seems  as  if  the 
recognition  that  we  know  only  our  own  desires  and 
fancies  about  the  order  of  the  universe,  ought,  rather, 
to  make  us  give  more  implicit  obedience  to  what  is 
evidently  the  order,  the  necessity  of  man's  nature. 
We  find  no  trace — Professor  James  is  the  first  to  admit 
it — no  trace  of  morality  in  the  proceedings  of  physical 
nature  ;  he  might  have  added  that  we  find  distinct 
traces  of  what  would  be  immorality  for  us  in  the 
proceedings  of  our  very  near  animal  relatives.  What 
can  this  prove  save  that  morality  is  a  necessity,  a  law 
special  to  man ;  and  what  stronger  sanction  can 
morality  obtain  than  the  fact  that  it  is  specially  neces- 


214  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

sary  for  us  ?  Suppose,  by  way  of  comparison,  that  we 
ask  which  is  the  more  cogent  reason  for  eating,  or 
sleeping,  or  taking  a  walk,  the  fact  that  all  our  neigh- 
bours do  as  much,  and  that  we  are  bound  to  them  by 
similarity  ;  or  the  fact  that  each  of  us,  individually, 
cannot  live  comfortably  without  eating,  or  sleeping,  or 
taking  a  walk  ?  Surely  the  greater  cogency  is  the 
nearer  to  ourselves.  If  it  were  otherwise,  we  should 
be  bound  to  disregard  the  command,  the  necessity  of 
our  individual  constitution,  and  imitate  our  neighbours 
not  -merely  in  the  points  in  which  there  is  unanimity 
of  nature  and  interest,  but  also  in  the  points  in  which 
there  is  discrepancy.  Similarly  between  mankind  and 
the  universe.  The  moral  imperative  is  an  imperative 
because  man's  constitution  and  circumstances  enforce 
it  ;  it  is  an  order  which  cannot  be  disobeyed,  because 
it  comes  from  within.  Would  the  sanction  be  greater 
if  the  imperative  applied  also  to  the  universe  beyond 
man,  if  the  order  came  from  without  ?  Were  such 
the  case,  and  did  the  cogency  of  an  imperative  depend 
upon  the  number  and  the  variety  of  the  classes  which 
obeyed  it ;  did  solidarity  with  the  non-human  universe 
instead  of  solidarity  inside  mankind,  and,  moreover, 
inside  the  human  individual  constitution,  determine 
our  actions — then  we  should  be  bound  to  set  at  de- 
fiance all  our  human  instincts  of  righteousness  merely 
because  we  recognised  that  the  universe,  which  is  bigger 
than  mankind,  conformed  to  a  standard  which  is  not 
that  of  human  rightdoing  at  all.  So  far  as  we  can  see, 
there  is  a  different  right  and  wrong,  or  perhaps  no 
right  and  wrong  at  all,  outside  the  human  being  and 
human  society.  Certain  philosophers,  and  particularly 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  215 

certain  mystics,  have  seen  this  plainly,  and  settled  the 
question  in  a  strictly  logical  manner.  Our  moral 
instincts,  they  have  justly  perceived,  although  necessary 
to  us  and  to  this  earthly  existence,  need  have  no  use 
in  an  existence  carried  on  on  different  lines.  These 
instincts  may  therefore  be  merely  temporary  ;  and,  our 
spiritual  essence  once  freed  from  bodily  and  social 
requirements,  it  is  conceivable  that  we  may  shed  such 
narrowing  and  distorting  prejudices,  and  get  to  like 
those  arrangements  of  the  universe  which  we  now  call 
evil,  quite  as  well  as  the  others  which  we  now  call  good  ; 
or  rather,  we  may  give  up  such  earthly  provincialisms 
as  approval  and  disapproval,  and  sit  quite  happily  at 
the  First  Cause's  right  hand,  perfectly  satisfied  with 
the  mere  knowledge  of  the  chain  of  causality. 


This  is  exceedingly  logical.     But  it   is  not   moral. 
Our  instincts  for  good  somehow  refuse  to  be  satisfied 

D 

with  the  assurance  that  they  are  temporary  and  neces- 
sary hallucinations,  and  accordingly  we  find  that  such 
a  solution  of  the  great  riddle  does  not  commend  itself 
to  Professor  James  any  more  than  to  that  wholesome 
and  practical,  if  rather  rough  and  ready,  moralist,  the 
Church,  which  has  never  omitted  to  burn  the  persons, 
or  at  least  the  books,  of  those  who  advanced  this 
particular  justification  of  God's  ways  to  man.  The 
Church  and  Professor  James  have  felt  very  strongly 
that  life  would  be  unendurable  without  a  maximum  of 
moral  feeling  on  man's  part ;  and  that  such  a  maximum 


216  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

requires  that  man  should  blindly  strive  and  cry  out 
for  morality,  eternally  and  everywhere.  Besides,  a 
divinity  is  wanted,  not  merely  to  satisfy  the  logical 
and  the  emotional  wants  of  mankind,  but  also  to 
sanction,  to  enforce  morality  and,  even  more,  to  satisfy 
man's  moral  cravings.  Hence  a  constant  juggling  with 
ideas,  juggling  whose  efficacy  depended  on  the  extent 
to  which  mankind  was  able  to  close  either  the  eye  of 
morality  or  the  eye  of  logic.  Original  Sin  was  one 
of  the  dodges  which  succeeded  when  the  eye  of  morality 
was  closed  ;  when  the  eye  of  reason,  always  a  little 
short-sighted,  was  winked,  it  was  possible  to  arrange 
matters  by  splitting  the  divine  essence  into  a  Father 
who  did  all  the  bad  obscure  business  of  creation,  and 
a  Son  filling  the  centre  of  vision  with  the  effulgence 
of  self-sacrifice  and  redemption  ;  indeed,  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  more  rationalised  Christianity  of  Pro- 
fessor James  loses  incalculably  by  the  reduction  to  a 
minimum  of  the  divinity  of  Christ.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  the  church  through  all  the  centuries,  and  Professor 
James  through  all  his  volume,  have  found  themselves 
perpetually  in  presence  of  the  old,  old  dilemma,  not 
the  dilemma  of  determinism  with  which  Professor 
James  has  dealt  explicitly,  but  the  much  worse,  because 
implicit,  dilemma  of  "justifying  the  Ways  of  God 
to  Man." 


VI 


Professor  James's  will  to  believe  has  taken  him  into 
the  thick  of  it.  For,  not  satisfied  with  breaking  up 
the  causal  connexion  of  the  Universe  and  filling  up 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  217 

the  gaps  with  Free  Will  and  Chance,  he  has  felt  the 
need  of  reinstating  into  this  discontinuous  and  parti- 
coloured scheme  of  things  a  First  Cause  who  shall 
satisfy  the  moral  cravings  of  man. 

According  to  a  favourite  theological  habit,  Professor 
James  sees  in  these  moral  cravings  an  implied  promise 
that  they  must  be  satisfied.  Now,  satisfaction  is  un- 
doubtedly connected  with  demand.  Only,  a  demand 
does  not  imply  that  its  satisfaction  is  actually  taking 
place,  but  rather  the  contrary.  We  suffer  very  keenly 
from  the  insufficient  morality  of  the  universe.  This 
is  a  reason  for  our  trying  to  increase  it  by  our  own 
efforts  and  in  our  own  sphere  ;  it  is  not  a  reason  for 
supposing  that  the  very  cause  of  our  suffering  is  really 
trying  to  diminish  our  doing  so.  Why  not  believe  at 
once  that  there  must  be  a  fire  hidden  somewhere  in  a 
room  because  we  feel  ourselves  perishing  with  cold  ? 
Let  us  make  up  a  fire  ourselves,  and  all  will  be  set 
right. 

Right  for  some  persons,  but  evidently  not  for  others. 
What  they  want  is  not  to  be  warm,  but  to  feel  sure 
that  the  host  who  has  (in  their  view)  invited  them  to 
his  house,  has  disliked  the  notion  of  their  being  cold. 
Any  increase  in  Good  which  Man  brings  into  things 
does  not  satisfy  Man's  desire  that  things  should  be 
good  apart  from  him. 

Hence  another  argument.  No  longer  that  we  are 
mistaken  in  making  such  a  fuss  about  good  and  evil, 
but  rather,  that  the  very  fuss  we  make  will,  in 
some  sort,  oblige  the  First  Cause  to  reveal  how  very, 
very  much  more  good  there  is  in  the  universe  than  we 
ever  guessed.  This  argument  is,  like  all  the  other 


218  PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND 

arguments  (and  my  counter-arguments),  as  old  as  the 
hills.  But  Professor  James  has  contrived  to  put  it 
into  a  form  most  modern  and  most  scientific,  alas  ! 
although  to  my  mind  not  very  cogent.  Since,  of  all 
devices  for  putting  me  in  conceit  with  a  First  Cause, 
the  one  least  likely  is  that  of  representing  the  First 
Cause  as  a  Vivisector.  For  it  is  upon  the  description 
of  the  agonies  and  the  terror  of  a  poor  dog  in  the 
process,  as  Professor  James  consolingly  puts  it,  of 
"  performing  a  function  incalculably  higher  than  that 
which  prosperous  canine  life  admits  of,"  that  is  based 
the  argument  in  question :  if  mankind  could  only 
understand  as  much  more  of  the  universe  and  the 
purposes  of  the  Creator  as  the  physiologist's  assistant 
understands  of  the  uses  of  vivisection  than  the  vivi- 
sected dog,  then  surely  mankind  might  be  expected  (as 
the  dog  would  be)  to  "  religiously  acquiesce  "  in  being, 
so  to  speak,  vivisected  by  the  divinity.  This  argument 
has  seen  so  much  service  in  various  theological  forms, 
that  it  must  evidently  afford  satisfaction  to  a  large 
number  of  persons  with  a  will  to  believe  sufficient  to 
overcome  certain  repugnances.  But  there  are  other 
persons  to  whom  vivisection,  even  of  dogs,  is  not  a 
subject  for  "  religious  acquiescence "  ;  to  whom  the 
very  wickedest  imaginable  act  would  be  to  hide  from 
the  creature  thus  immolated  any  reason  which  might 
justify,  any  good  which  might  counterbalance,  its 
unmitigated  anguish.  For  if  there  are  minds  so  con- 
stituted as  to  require  deism  for  their  moral  well-being, 
even  deism  garnished  with  such  analogies,  there  are 
certainly  many  others  (and  perhaps  even  among  really 
pious  believers)  who  either  break  loose  from  any  deistic 


THE   "WILL   TO   BELIEVE"  219 

creed,  as  from  a  species  of  Moloch  worship,  or  remain 
within  its  pale,  suffering  frightful  doubts  or  stultifying 
their  reason,  merely  because  they  have  got  enslaved  to 
the  logical  demand  for  some  original  cause  of  all 
things.  Why  has  Omnipotence  allowed  us  to  develop 
moral  instincts  which  necessarily  condemn  some  of 
Omnipotence's  conspicuous  proceedings  ?  Why  given 
us  reason  enough  to  see  only  the  evil,  and  withheld  the 
extra  amount  which  would  have  revealed  the  eventual 
good  ?  Surely  one-half  of  religiously-constituted  men 
and  women  have  suffered  from  this  thought,  whether 
expressed  in  symbols  of  original  sin  and  redemption 
through  innocent  blood,  or  awakened  quite  unmeta- 
phorically  by  the  individual  cruelties  of  Fate.  For 
there  are  worse  things  to  think  of  than  even  the 
Brockton  murderer  (to  whom  Professor  James  perhaps 
unnecessarily  introduces  us),  and  which  stick  more  in 
one's  throat,  mine  at  least,  than  any  human  act  of 
meanness  and  brutality.  Cast  your  eye  over  the  circle 
of  your  own  acquaintance  and  you  will  understand 
what  I  mean  :  cases  where  two  creatures  are  separated 
by  death  at  the  moment  of  a  tardy,  sighed-for  union  ; 
worse,  cases  where  a  creature,  who  has  never  had  any 
gladness  in  life,  sees  its  poor  little  candle  of  happiness 
snuffed  out  in  a  few  months,  or  weeks,  with  the  life  of 
a  wife  or  husband  ;  cases  where  we  are  abashed  at  the 
bare  thought  of  offering  condolence,  and  which  exist  at 
every  moment  and  in  every  street.  Is  the  thought  of 
such  things  as  these  made  more  supportable  by  the 
belief  that  the  Creator  might  have  made  them  seem  less 
bad  if  only  he  had  cared  ? 

To  such  of  us  as  feel  in  this  manner,  a  universe 


220  PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND 

whence  the  First  Cause  has  been  banished,  like  the 
gods  of  Lucretius,  seems  a  thing  almost  too  good  to  be 
true.  And  some  of  us,  assuredly,  have  felt  a  new  lease 
of  moral  life  accompanying  the  gradual  or  sudden 
recognition  that  all  we  know  of  good  and  of  evil  is  con- 
fined to  man  ;  that  we  are  spiritually  akin  only  to  our 
own  kind  ;  and  that  the  ambiguous  divinity,  who  has 
tortured  us  with  good  instincts  and  evil  examples,  is 
but  a  Frankenstein's  Monster  of  our  own  making. 


VII 


But  to  those  who  have  suffered  from  them,  such 
thoughts  are  too  painful  almost  to  bear  recalling  ;  the 
recollection  thereof,  like  that  of  Dante's  forest,  renews 
the  horror. 

So  let  us  turn  to  the  more  human  side  of  this 
controversy,  which,  viewed  in  a  kindly  spirit,  is  not 
without  its  pleasant  humours.  For  on  few  occasions 
does  the  ingenuous  self-importance  of  mankind  show 
out  more  than  when  mankind  sets  about  making  its 
graven  images.  The  practical  activities  of  life,  and  the 
scientific  ones,  are  hampered  by  material  facts  and 
intellectual  necessities  often  foreign  to  the  individual ; 
and  even  artistic  creation,  one  of  man's  freest  activities, 
is,  after  all,  limited  by  questions  of  school  and  fashion, 
of  teachers  and  of  public.  But  each  individual  is 
working  for  himself  solely  and  solitarily,  expressing 
only  his  own  wants  and  likings,  when  busy  about  the 
idol  labelled  God. 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  221 

Talk  of  monotheism,  forsooth  !  Why  there  are  as 
many  gods  as  there  are  believers,  and  even  more,  for 
each  believer  may  make  himself  a  whole  Olympus  full 
in  a  lifetime,  each  god,  of  course,  being,  turn  about, 
the  true  one.  Take,  for  instance,  the  matter  of  liking 
and  disliking,  or  rather  of  disliking,  for  in  most  people 
personality  shows  more  in  that.  We  all  of  us  proceed 
on  the  assumption  that  God  cannot  like  what  we 
dislike,  nor  dislike  what  we  like  ;  and  if  we  all  agree 
that  he  cannot  possibly  like  evil,  it  is  simply  because 
evil  admits  of  as  many  specifications  as  there  are 
persons  to  do  the  specifying.  I  personally  cannot 
believe  that  God  can  like  vivisection  ;  but  Professor 
James,  as  we  have  seen,  has  compared  God  to  a  person 
engaged  in  that  pursuit ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  plain 
that  Professor  James  thinks  that  God  cannot  bear 
people  who  think  like  M.  Renan,  who,  in  his  turn  (as 
regards  irony  and  indulgence  rightly)  perhaps  surmised 
that  God  thought  very  much  like  himself.  Meanwhile 
Mr.  Ruskin,  not  without  show  of  reason,  thought  God 
cjuld  not  possibly  like  St.  Peters  ;  Galileo,  a  religious 
savant,  that  God  could  not  like  the  Ptolemaic  System  ; 
Origen,  and  other  early  Christians  catalogued  in 
Flaubert's  Temptations  of  St.  Anthony,  that  God  could 
not  possibly  like  Sex  ;  some  other  early  Christians  (and 
later  transcendental  philosophers)  that  God  could  still 
less  possibly  like  a  Material  Universe.  And  meanwhile, 
among  these  conflicting  statements,  the  one  thing  at  all 
demonstrably  certain  is  the  existence  of  St.  Peters, 
the  Ptolemaic  System,  Sex,  the  Material  Universe, 
and  all  the  rest ;  and  the  one  thing  logically  pre- 
sumable is  that  since  they  do  exist,  the  cause  of  all 


222  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

existence  must  have  been  somehow  mixed  up  in  their 
existing.  .  .  . 

I  have  said  that  people's  religious  views  are  even 
more  determined  (for  I  am  fatally  incapable  of  believing 
in  a  free  will  to  believe]  by  their  dislikings  than  by  their 
likings.  Dislike  is  a  stronger  feeling,  as  a  rule,  than 
liking  ;  it  is  also  one  which  suffers  much  more  from 
need  of  sympathy  (since  the  thing  you  like  is  in  a  way 
company),  and,  therefore,  cries  out  for  some  one  to 
share  it.  Moreover,  there  may  be  a  degree  of  truth  in 
the  statement  of  certain  pessimistic  philosophers,  that 
owing  to  some  mysterious  internal  arrangement,  mental 
or  bodily,  dislike — or  as  some  people  call  it,  dis- 
approval, reprobation — gives  a  maximum  of  activity 
with  a  minimum  of  work,  in  other  words,  pleasure  ; 
gives  you  a  sort  of  comfortable  feeling  of  something  to 
push  against,  and  generally  enlarges  the  happy  flow  of 
the  vital  spirits.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  responsible  for 
this  notion  ;  personally  I  am  always  trying  to  believe 
that  I  do  not  like  disliking,  and  even  if  my  practice 
bear  it  out,  I  feel  I — well,  I  am  bound  to  use  the  word 
— I  dislike  the  theory  of  the  pleasantness  of  disliking. 
Let  me  therefore  appeal  to  the  authority  of  Professor 
James,  and  thereby  also  end  this  digression  on  what  we 
expect  from  our  graven  images,  by  resorting  to  what 
Professor  James  apparently  expects  from  the  one  which 
he  worships  : — 

"  When,  .  .  ."  he  writes,  "  we  believe  that  a  God  is 
there,  and  that  he  is  one  of  the  claimants  .  .  .  the 
strenuous  mood  awakens  at  the  sound.  It  saith  among 
the  trumpets  ha !  ha !  it  smelleth  the  battle  afar  off ; 
the  thunder  of  the  captains  and  the  shouting.  Its  blood 


THE  "WILL   TO    BELIEVE"  223 

is  up  ;  and  cruelty  to  lesser  claims ,  so  far  from  being  a 
deterrent  element ,  does  but  add  to  the  stern  joy  with  which 
it  leaps  to  answer  to  the  greater" 

This  is  tremendous  ;  and  the  passage  I  have  italicised 
inspires  me  with  fear  of  what  may,  some  day,  befall 
certain  persons  mentioned  in  previous  pages  of  the 
volume.  I  feel  reassured,  however,  on  reflecting  that 
M.  Renan  and  Professor  Clifford,  and  especially  Hegel, 
are  safely  gathered  to  their  fathers  ;  that  there  are 
neither  Alexandrian  libraries  to  burn  nor  witches  (or, 
rather,  the  latter  would  be  salaried  as  mediums)  ;  and 
that  Jacobin  clubs,  if  they  arise  nowadays,  are  sure 
to  guillotine  at  once  so  great  a  man  of  science  as 
Professor  James  at  the  instigation  of  some  nostrum- 
dealing  Marat. 

The  God  in  whom  Professor  James  wills  to  believe 
himself,  and  also  wills  that  his  neighbours  should  do 
alike,  is,  as  the  above  quotation  has  suggested  to  the 
reader,  essentially  a  Man  of  War.  Now  it  is  no  good, 
even  for  a  divinity,  to  be  a  Man  of  War  in  time  of 
peace.  Peace,  therefore,  is  not  at  all  what  Professor 
James  looks  forward  to  (indeed,  he  more  than  once 
symbolises  it  as  a  tea-table  presided  over  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer),  but  rather  a  universe  which  shall  be 
a  happy  hunting-ground  for  good  and  active  men, 
presided  over  by  a  good  and  active  God,  with  a  certain 
amount  of  wickedness  and  misery  preserved  in  it  on 
purpose.  And  here  is  really  Professor  James's  solution, 
not  so  much  reasoned  and  explicit,  but  constitutional 
and  implied,  of  the  existence  of  evil.  It  becomes  good 
as  a  necessary  condition  of  the  exercise  of  goodness. 
"  Not  the  absence  of  vice,"  he  exclaims,  "  but  Vice 


224  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

there,  and  Virtue  holding  it  by  the  throat,  seems  the 
ideal  human  state  "  ;  and  this  being  the  case,  it  becomes 
plain  that  a  perfectly  good  omnipotence  could  not  have 
created  mankind  less  sinful  than  it  is.  Indeed,  all 
possible  objections  are  forestalled  by  this  conclusive 
view.  For  if  one  objected,  that  holding  anything  by 
the  throat  is  but  a  low-class  employment  for  Virtue, 
and  that  pleasure  in  cruelty  to  lesser  claims  smacks  of 
our  childish  desire  to  be  the  detective  who  may  lie  and 
cheat  in  order  to  circumvent  cheats  and  liars,  or  even 
of  our  ancestors'  taste  for  fine  avengers  a  la  Titus 
Andronicus  ;  if  one  suggested  that  a  more  amiable  ideal 
was  set  before  us  by  Jesus  Christ,  a  very  little  reflection 
would  prove  that  this  was  futile :  that  too  much 
amiability  would  weaken  the  moral  muscle,  and  that  in 
the  ideal  state  the  breed  of  villains,  as  in  hunting 
counties  the  breed  of  foxes,  must  be  considered  as 
sacred . 

So  much  for  Evil  in  the  form  of  Vice.  Professor 
James  goes  further  in  his  justification  of  the  First 
Cause.  If  vice  is  required  for  the  sake  of  keeping 
mankind  actively  virtuous,  a  certain  amount  of  misery 
is  quite  as  necessary  to  enable  mankind  to  feel  happi- 
ness. For — 

"  Regarded  as  a  stable  finality,  every  outward  good 
(and  Professor  James,  by  specifying  innocence^  also  adds 
every  inner  grace)  becomes  a  mere  weariness  to  the 
flesh.  It  must  be  menaced,  be  occasionally  lost,  for 
its  goodness  to  be  fully  felt  as  such.  Nay,  more  than 
occasionally  lost.  No  one  knows  the  worth  of 
innocence  till  he  knows  it  is  gone  for  ever."  And 
so  on. 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  225 

That  is  conclusive.  But  if,  therefore,  this  is  the 
best  of  all  possible  universes,  and  its  being  bad  is 
just  a  part  of  its  goodness,  why  then  there  is  no 
problem  of  evil  at  all,  and  there  was  no  need  for  a 
will  to  believe  in  Chance,  in  Free  Will,  in  ultimate 
justice  on  the  human  pattern,  and  in  the  Divinity 
being  a  kindly  Vivisector.  The  best  of  all  possible 
First  Causes  must  evidently  have  created  the  best  of 
all  possible  universes  ;  and  we  might,  without  more 
ado,  have  rested  in  the  optimism  of  Dr.  Pangloss,  as 
set  forth  by  Voltaire  in  his  Candide. 


VIII 


But  that  immortal  handbook  of  philosophy  contains 
another  saying  which  suits  me  and  those  who  will 
not  to  believe,  better  ;  a  saying  less  cosmic,  no  doubt, 
but  easier  to  understand  and  act  upon.  "  Tous  les 
evenements  sont  enchaines  dans  le  meilleur  des  mondes 
possible  ;  car  enfin,  si  vous  n'aviez  pas  etc  chasse  d'un 
beau  chateau  a  grands  coups  de  pied,  &c.,  &c.  .  .  . 
Cela  est  bien  dit,  repondit  Candide ;  mats  il  faut  cul- 
tiver  notre  jar  din." 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
Panglossian  theology,  where  he  has  adopted  it,  has 
betrayed  Professor  James  into  a  statement  which  is 
damaging  to  the  fruitful  garden  of  human  nature  ; 
when,  in  order  to  explain  away  the  presence  of  misery 
in  the  world,  he  has  insisted  that  without  it  we  should 
cease  to  perceive  happiness.  But  I  have  studied  modern 
psychology  in  the  splendid  work  of  quite  a  different 

'5 


226  PROFESSOR   JAMES  AND 

Professor,  William  James  (also  of  Harvard  however, 
and  who  has  collaborated  in  all  the  finest  part  of 
the  present  volume  with  his  namesake),  and  can 
therefore  state  theoretically,  what  for  the  rest  I  should 
have  always  expected,  that  no  one  believes  any  longer 
in  the  old  notions  of  necessary  relativity  between 
items  of  cognition  ;  and  that  hot  is  hot,  smooth  is 
smooth,  pleasant  is  pleasant,  owing  to  direct  relations 
between  outer  objects  and  ourselves,  and  would  be 
so  if  cold,  and  rough,  and  disagreeable  had  remained 
in  mente  dei.  And  thus  the  normal  human  being 
requires  no  set-off  to  happiness,  since  he  is  so  com- 
pounded that  the  mere  ordinary  variations  in  himself 
and  his  surroundings  afford  the  variety  necessary  for 
it  to  be  conscious.  Hunger  and  satisfaction,  sleep 
and  waking,  exercise  and  rest,  alternate  with  each 
other  in  a  rhythm  of  change  and  repetition  requiring 
no  stimulus  of  starvation  or  insomnia  or  ennui ;  even 
as  the  never-ending  alternations  of  day  and  night, 
seasons  and  places,  the  never-ending  changefulness 
of  charm  in  material  beauty  and  in  the  things  of  the 
intellect  and  the  sentiment,  require  no  irrelevance 
of  hideousness,  or  wickedness,  or  unintelligibility 
(though  such  is  furnished  us  in  plenty  !)  to  make  us 
keenly  enjoy  them.  Nay,  health  itself,  which  seems 
a  relative  conception,  is  a  very  positive  reality,  letting 
us  know  its  presence  by  the  joyousness  and  energy 
in  which  the  very  thought  of  disease  is  utterly  for- 
gotten. The  powers  of  the  universe  have  indeed, 
alas,  given  mankind  hard  things  to  suffer  ;  but  let 
us  do  them  justice :  they  have  not  made  that 
suffering  a  condition  of  happiness,  like  Professor 


THE   "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  227 

James's  Creator  (and  Created  ?)  of  restless  and  biases 
mortals. 

Thus  much  of  the  little  garden  which  the  experi- 
enced hero  of  Voltaire  urged  us  to  cultivate  :  the 
garden  of  strictly  human  capacities,  human  morality, 
human  logic,  human  sense  of  beauty  and  fitness,  all 
bounded  by  the  faculties  of  man  ;  nay,  perhaps  all 
contained  within  man's  limited  faculties,  and  created 
by  them  :  for  who  can  tell  what  wilderness  of  Realities 
may  lie  beyond,  of  wilderness  or  even  of  not  being  ? 
I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  we  should  check  the 
passionate  desire  and  speculation  about  that  beyond. 
Indeed,  the  mirages  which  mankind  sees  beyond  the 
flaming  bounds  of  space  and  time  are,  in  my  opinion, 
as  much  an  integral  part  of  the  human  enclosure 
whence  they  are  projected  as  the  images  thrown  out 
by  a  magic  lantern  belong  in  reality  to  the  room  where 
they  seem  not  to  be,  rather  than  to  the  stage  across 
which  they  appear  to  move.  Nay,  among  the  things 
in  this  garden,  wherein  we  are  thus  fatally  enclosed, 
let  us  cherish  as  among  the  choicest  some  of  these 
same/tf/<z  morgana  sights  which  it  projects  on  to  the 
inane  beyond.  Our  ideas  of  an  order  of  the  universe, 
when  such  ideas  are  the  result  of  mankind's  wish  for 
harmony  and  justice,  are,  after  all,  a  kind  of  reality, 
a  reality  to  the  faculties  which  produce  them  ;  and 
the  divine  figures,  radiant  in  triumph,  or  ineffably 
touching  in  sorrow,  who  have  heightened  the  joy 
and  softened  the  suffering  of  the  ages  that  are  gone, 
have  not  only  been  the  finest  realities  to  those  who 
believed  in  their  objective  existence,  but  ought,  were 
we  modest  and  wise,  to  remain  among  the  most  real 


228  PROFESSOR  JAMES  AND 

existences  for  the  feeling  of  those  who,  like  me, 
believe  them  to  be  but  subjective  creations.  And 
in  the  falling  to  pieces  of  the  old  creeds,  and  the 
extrication  therefrom  of  the  various  possible  modes 
of  conceiving  a  union  of  the  spirit  of  man  with  the 
universe,  Professor  James  has  surely  forgotten  the 
best. 

He  dismisses  as  immoral  such  union  as  consists  of 
a  mere  knowledge  of  God  by  his  ways,  and  decides 
in  favour  of  a  union  with  God  by  co-operation  with 
his  intentions,  by  the  conforming  of  our  action  to  his 
wish.  But  besides  these  modes  of  unification,  there 
remains  another,  which  can  be  traced  in  the 
sentiment,  if  not  in  the  dogma,  of  most  of  the  creeds 
of  the  past,  and  in  the  instincts  of  many  agnostics  of 
the  present,  in  the  utterances  of  all  great  poets, 
believing  or  unbelieving,  in  the  forefront  of  whom, 
with  his  hymn  to  the  Sun,  stands  Francis  of  Assisi. 
I  am  speaking  of  the  unification  by  love.  By  love, 
not  as  submission,  but  as  enjoyment.  There  is  a  stage 
of  consciousness  which  Professor  James  apparently  omits 
in  his  list,  or  confuses  with  one  of  the  other  stages  : 
the  stage  not  of  perception,  nor  of  cognition,  nor  of 
volition,  but  of  a  consummation  which  seems  the  result, 
and  teleologically  speaking,  the  rational  end  of  the 
never-ceasing  flux  of  action  from  without  and  reaction 
from  within.  One  may  say  of  it,  with  Goethe's 
Chorus  Mysticus,  "  hier  wirds  Ereignis  "  ;  but  it  is  the 
attainable,  not  the  unattainable,  which  is  accomplished. 
Sensitiveness,  cognition,  volition,  action  ;  is  there  not 
in  this  incessant  circling  chain  an  omitted  link  called 
satisfaction  ?  For  satisfaction,  to  which  all  human 


THE   "WILL   TO   BELIEVE"  229 

states  tend  (however  balked  in  so  doing),  is  in  its 
turn  the  great  replenisher  of  the  various  activities 
which  subserve  it.  Can  we  grasp  the  universe,  make 
it  ours,  assimilate  as  much  of  it  as  possib  le,  in  a  fashion 
more  complete  than  when  we  enjoy  the  universe,  love 
it,  make  use  of  the  universe  joyfully  ?  Nay,  is  it  not 
this  state  of  consummation,  of  satisfaction,  of  identifi- 
cation of  man's  wants  and  nature's  possibilities,  the 
only  state  in  which  the  old  problem  of  evil  is  solved, 
is  banished  and  forgotten? 

Not  all  that  we  know  of  the  universe  and  the 
universe's  ways  conduces  to  this.  Far  from  it.  But 
what  do  cognition,  volition,  action,  strive  after  save 
diminishing  to  the  utmost  our  occasion  of  coming  in 
contact  with  such  of  the  ways  of  the  universe  as  offend 
us  ?  Perception,  thought,  decision,  are  all  of  them 
combined  in  an  effort,  which  becomes  ceaselessly  more 
complex,  to  avoid  pain  and  obtain  pleasure,  to  forego 
the  smaller  pleasure  for  the  sake  of  the  larger,  to 
avoid  the  greater  pain  by  taking  counsel  of  the  smaller. 
All  these  activities  tend,  as  I  have  said,  to  a  state 
of  harmony  with  our  surroundings,  a  state  of 
appreciation,  of  love  of  the  happiness  we  feel. 

And  this  state  is  just  the  one  in  which  it  becomes 
easiest  to  believe  that  what  we  call  Evil  may  be  merely 
what  is  unsuitable  to  us,  and  what,  once  eliminated 
from  our  neighbourhood,  may  find  some  proper  sphere 
elsewhere,  and  become  good  to  organisms  different  from 
ours.  It  is  this  kind  of  religious  feeling  which,  in 
Antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages,  gave  birth  to  art, 
man's  one  successful  attempt  to  extract  only  good  from 
the  universe.  And  it  is,  very  likely,  in  the  short 


230  PROFESSOR  JAMES   AND 

spells  of  such  feeling  that  mankind  has  recovered 
strength  sufficient  to  endure,  to  hope,  and  to 
strive. 


VIII 


This  also  is  a  matter  of  individual  constitution  and 
habit.  Those  who  require  such  a  way  of  looking 
at  life,  inevitably  will  to  believe  in  its  possibility,  and 
thereby  realise  it ;  for  in  matters  of  feeling,  even  if 
in  no  others,  wishes  are  really  horses  and  we  all  may 
ride. 

And  herewith  I  return  to  my  starting-point,  to 
wit,  that  the  chief  use  of  such  speculations  as  these 
of  Professor  James's,  and  the  use,  I  trust  also,  of 
my  answers  thereto,  is  to  make  us  acquainted  with 
various  and  equally  desirable  types  of  mind,  each  with 
its  uses  and  drawbacks. 

Is  it  possible  for  these  different  types  of  mind  ever 
fully  to  understand  the  nature,  the  habits  of  each 
other  ?  Will  it  be  possible,  for  instance,  for  Professor 
James  to  realise  that  the  writer  of  these  notes  is  one 
of  his  warmest  admirers  ?  And  is  it  then  possible 
for  me,  while  marshalling  my  counter-arguments, 
to  remember  the  hundred  points  of  agreement,  the 
hundred  luminous  suggestions  with  which  Professor 
James's  essays  have  delighted  me  ? 

Alas,  perhaps  not.  Of  all  things  in  the  world, 
thorough  perception  of  one's  neighbour's  existence 
is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  difficult.  But  in  proportion 
to  the  difficulty  should  be  the  effort.  Particularly 
on  the  part  of  those  who,  like  myself,  will  to  believe 


THE  "WILL  TO   BELIEVE"  231 

that  man's  highest  work  is  the  realisation  of  a  human 
ideal ;  and  that  the  only  Godhead  which  can  make 
binding  laws  for  man,  is  the  divinity  consubstantiate 
with  his  best  self,  and  shaped  in  the  glorified  image 
of  those  he  loves  most. 


ROSNY   AND   THE 
FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL 


ROSNY   AND  THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL 

NOVEL 


SHALL  we  ever  obtain  this  truth  which  all  novelists 
seem  striving  after,  or  have  we  ever  obtained  it  — 
truth,  subjective  truth  even,  such  as  we  find  it,  for 
instance,  in  Rousseau's  "  Confessions,"  or  in  cer- 
tain veiled  autobiographies,  like  "  Werther  "  and 
"  Adolphe  "  ? 

A  hundred  reasons  prevent  the  novelist  from  work- 
ing with  absolute  fidelity  to  life  ;  and  reluctance  to 
abuse  confidence,  to  hurt  the  feelings  of  his  models, 
is  the  least  important  of  these  reasons.  The  strongest 
reason  is  that  reality  is  reality,  defies  presentation  by 
its  complexity  ;  that  a  mutilated,  isolated,  arranged 
reality,  with  cause  and  effect  freely  upset,  is  no  reality 
at  all  ;  moreover,  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  one 
save  a  professional  novelist  would  give  a  thank  you  for 
real  reality  in  a  novel.  Reality  is  valuable  to  us  only 
as  the  raw  material  for  something  very  different  ;  the 
artistic  sense  alters  it  into  patterns,  the  logical  faculty 
reduces  it  to  ideas.  Except  for  individual  action,  the 
individual  case,  which  is  the  only  reality  ',  has  no  final  I  /xq/ 
importance. 


235 


236 


ROSNY   AND 


But  the  novelist  continues  to  delude  himself;  he 
piques  himself  upon  the  quality  he  cannot  get.  Most 
novelists  (and  the  more  deliberately  realistic  the  worse) 
treat  human  life  and  character  by  a  system  of  scientific 
fictions,  deliberately  simplifying  phenomena  till  they 
become  abstractions,  diagrams ;  they  pretend  to  ex- 
plain as  the  result  of  a  single  factor  of  grossly  ex- 
aggerated importance  what  must  have  been  the  result 
of  a  dozen  or  a  hundred  factors.  So,  the  real  action 
copied  from  life  is  made  the  centre  of  a  circle  of 
unrealities. 

Again,  most  novelists  practise  realism  by  explaining 
the  unknown  in  one  real  personage  by  the  known  in 
another  real  personage,  most  commonly  their  own  self. 
They  fuse  together  two  creatures  of  the  same  category, 
and  think  that  two  half  organisms  must  necessarily 
make  one  whole,  forgetting,  alas !  that  you  can  unite 
only  such  parts  as  complete  each  other,  but  not  such 
others  as  are  either  duplicates  or  substitutes  ;  producing 
by  such  arrangements  sirens  and  minotaurs,  creatures 
who  could  not  have  assimilated  with  a  bird's  gizzard  or 
a  ruminant's  stomach  the  food  which  must  have  passed 
through  a  human  gullet  or  set  in  motion  human  limbs. 
At  best  they  patch  up  centaurs,  decorative  animals  who 
can  trot  and  caper,  because  the  artist  paints  them 
trotting  and  capering,  but  who  have  two  stomachs 
and  two  pairs  of  lungs,  those  of  the  man  and  those 
of  the  horse,  a  reduplication  which  natural  selection 
and  Dr.  Weissmann's  "Law  of  Panmixia"  render 
improbable. 

Is  this  exaggeration?  Scarcely.  Is  not  a  Pere 
Goriot,  for  instance,  an  agglomeration  of  the  parental 


••  I  •• '. 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL      237 

quality  of  at  least  a  dozen  parents,  something  analogous         v 
to  the  creature  on  the  Shield  of  Sicily  and  the  Isle  of  I  / 
Man,  made  of  three  legs  without  a  head  or  arms  ?  ;: 
The  day  will  perhaps  come  when  biological  psychology 
and  the  study  of  individual  cases,  when,  above  all,  a 
scientific  habit  of  mind,  will  accustom  us  to  the  notion 
that  an  individual  cannot  be  anything  except  himself  ; 

that  if  a  real  Tom  were  fused  with  a  real  Dick,  and 

*  9       9  j 
both  with  a  real  Harry,  there  would  be  an  end  to  the   AA-4^ 

three  realities  without  the  birth  of  a  fourth  one.  We 
may  then  learn,  perhaps,  how  real  people  are  made  up 
of  various  strands ;  the  necessary  fashion  in  which 
grandfather  Falstaff  reacts  on  great-grandfather  Hamlet ; 
and  how  maternal  grandmother  Clarissa  Harlowe  is 
modified  or  neutralised  by  paternal  grandmother  Becky 
Sharp  ;  nay,  what  colour  of  hair  and  skin,  what  voice 
and  gait,  what  physiological  affinities  and  repulsions 
the  various  living  puppets  of  the  world's  stage  can 
have. 

Meanwhile,  the  psychological  novelist  traffics  in 
people's  ignorance,  and  men  like  Bourget  and  Maupas- 
sant manufacture  individuals  and  types  much  as  our 
earliest  ancestors  made  up  bird-women,  bull-men,  and 
that  magnificent  human  document,  the  bronze  chimasra 
of  Arezzo.  r 

Luckily,  there  are  still  novelists  without  .scientific 
pretensions,  without  mania  for  reality  ;  or,  shall  we 
say,  luckily  there  is  among  novelists  a  certain 
amount  of  intuition,  of  that  synthetic  and  sympathetic 
creation  which  is  genius.  I  will  not  even  speak  of 
Tolstoi.  Far  lesser  men,  like  Bjornsen  and  Rosny, 
have  given  us  work  which  is  intuitive  and  genial. 


238  ROSNY  AND 

• 

They  do  not  make  up  a  complete  skeleton  for  sale 
out  of  odd  bones  picked  out  of  the  heap  (I  knew  such 
a  skeleton  once,  the  property  of  a  painter  ;  it  had 
French  legs  and  the  skull  and  spine  of  a  Dutchman). 
They  tell  us  about  creatures  not  objectively  real,  but 
not  subjectively  unreal,  who  have  come  to  exist  by  a 
spontaneous  stratification  of  impressions,  in  the  trans- 
muting heat  of  liking  and  disliking  ;  creatures  who 
have  life  because  born  of  the  life,  the  preferences  and 
aversions,  the  passionate  hope  and  hostility  of  the 
author. 

For  the  rest,  should  we  regret  the  novelist's  in- 
capacity to  compass  reality  ?  Surely  not.  No  book, 
only  experience,  could  teach  us  to  know  the  individual. 
Indeed,  there  is  no  individual  to  know  ;  since  what  we 
take  for  one  is  merely  the  impression  made  on  ourselves 
by  the  ever-shrouded,  mysterious  selves  of  other  folk. 
The  novel  cannot  teach  us  to  know  the  individual. 
But  it  can  teach  us  certain  general — very  general — 
facts  about  classes  and  the  surroundings  of  classes.  It 
can  teach  us  the  influences  to  which  individuals  are 
subjected,  whether  of  bodily  crisis  or  of  social  position. 
Thus,  all  children  cut  their  teeth  and  crawl  on  the 
floor ;  all  girls  gradually  evolve  into  women  ;  all 
people  change  ;  all  people  have  material  wants,  social 
ideals,  national  peculiarities.  What  if  we  might  have 
known  all  this  without  the  novelist's  pseudo-realities  ? 
We  should  not  have  found  it  out  so  efficiently,  so 
universally  ;  we  should  have  known  these  things  piece- 
meal, superficially,  always  alike  too  late  in  the  day,  for 
want  of  something  to  make  it  worth  our  while — of 
something  to  catch  our  attention  and  enlist  our 


THE  FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL       239 

sympathies.  Now,  the  novelist  makes  it  worth  our 
while.  By  interesting  us  in  the  unreal  creatures, 
children  of  his  wishes  or  diagrams  of  his  analysis,  he 
accustoms  us  to  take  interest  in  the  living  mysteries 
who  walk,  act,  and  suffer  all  round  us.  And  when 
he  is  a  great  novelist — not  an  analyst,  not  a  copyist 
of  the  actual,  but  a  sympathetic  artist,  a  passionate 
lover  of  the  human  creature — he  can  do  infinitely 
more  :  he  can  people  our  fancy  with  living  phantoms 
whom  we  love,  he  can  enrich  our  life  by  the  strange 
power  called  charm. 


II 


I  doubt  whether  Rosny  will  ever  be  popular,  despite 
the  force  and  the  thoroughly  human  warmth  of  his 
genius.  He  is  full  of  arduousness,  of  splendid  qualities 
which  take  energy  and  intelligence  to  enjoy,  mixed 
with  unimportant  defects  which  require  even  more 
energy  and  intelligence  to  overlook  ;  for,  after  all, 
is  there  not  an  art  of  appreciation,  like  an  art  of 
living,  which  consists  in  making  the  most  of  what  is 
fruitful  and  pleasant,  and  disregarding  what  is  tire- 
some and  to  no  purpose?  There  are  not  many 
good  readers  (though  there  be  many  subtle  critics) 
in  the  world ;  but,  to  such  good  readers  as  there 
are,  Rosny,  like  Browning,  will  give  much  in  return 
for  much. 

Speaking  of  Browning,  Rosny  always  reminds  me  a 
little  of  Browning's  Grammarian  ;  there  is  in  him 
a  combination  or  discord  between  rare  distinction, 
amounting  to  exquisiteness  sometimes,  and  a  certain 


240  ROSNY  AND 

denseness  and  pedantry,  which  we  feel  sure  that  Gram- 
marian had  also,  going  to  be  buried  on  the  top  of  his 
rock,  untidy,  unkempt,  having  walked  past  much  of 
the  sweetness  and  beauty  of  life,  nay,  stumbled  over  it, 
in  his  absorption  over  the  enclitic  Si. 

Rosny  possesses  what  among  living  French  novelists 
is  rather  unique  than  rare — sincerity  ;  he  wishes  to 
please  himself,  he  does  not  make  himself  up  for  sale. 
Sincerity  ;  and  hence  the  highest  kind  of  distinction — 
personal  preference.  He  does  not  cast  about  him  for 
subjects  which  have  not  yet  been  treated  ;  he  does  not 
seek  for  the  exotic  in  the  wares  of  the  Far  East  or  in 
the  Parisian  dust-heap.  His  singular  originality — the 
new  views  of  life,  the  new  kind  of  characters  (his 
charming  class  of  nature-lovers,  men  with  intuition  and 
sympathy  for  clouds,  plants,  beasts)  which  he  gives  us 
are  due  to  the  fact  of  his  being  a  human  individuality, 
full  of  individual  likings  and  dislikings,  long  before 
he  is  a  writer.  Before  setting  about  rather  arduously 
describing,  analysing,  making  things  live  again,  he 
knows  perfectly  well  that  he  cares  for  them  in  them- 
selves, that  they  seem  to  him  full  of  intrinsic  impor- 
tance. One  feels  sure,  in  dealing  with  Rosny,  that  he 
would  have  liked  to  read  about  the  things  he  likes  to 
write  about ;  that  they  are  for  him  what  savages  and 
virgin  forests  are  to  his  little  friend  in  "  1'Imperieuse 
Bonte,"  what  storms  and  seas  are  to  the  doctor  in 
"  Renouveau,"  what  the  poor  abortions  are  to  the 
divinely  kind  women  in  that  strange  book  of  his  on 
charity.  Rosny's  distinction  of  nature,  his  real  aristo- 
cratic quality  (as  opposed  to  the  odd  impotencies  and 
depravities  which  other  French  novelists  cherish  as 


. 
THE  FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL        241 

signs  of  superiority !)  is  also  shown  in  that  love  for 
cleanness  and  strength  which  underlies  his  surgeon's, 
nay,  his  sick  nurse's  tenderness  towards  disease  and 
suffering.  He  sees  that  strength  alone  can  be  divine  ; 
not,  as  a  brutal  misunderstanding  of  Darwinism  is  for 
ever  telling  us,  because  strength  can  crush  weakness  ; 
but  because,  on  the  contrary,  only  through  strength 
can  weakness  be  compensated,  neutralised,  reclaimed. 
To  the  strong,  the  wise,  the  rich  shall  be  given,  because 
by  them  alone  can  more  be  given  in  return.  The  full  \ 
personal  life,  according  to  Rosny,  is  the  life  which 
transcends  mere  personal  wants  and  interests,  or,  rather,^/ 
whose  wants  and  interests  are  those  also  of  others. 

The  little  story  called  "  Daniel  Valgraive,"  though 
by  no  means  among  Rosny's  most  satisfactory  work, 
is  extremely  significant  of  his  temper  and  tendencies. 
It  is  a  story  of  a  man's  victorious  struggle  with 
creeping  death  ;  death  which  is  stealthily  invading  all 
his  nobler  part,  trying  to  beat  his  soul  back  to  the 
microscopic  central  ego,  trying  to  canalise  his  last 
vigour  into  mere  bitterness  and  envy.  Valgraive  is 
victorious.  In  him  "  la  fatalite  du  bien  "  is  irresistible, 
and  death  loses  its  sting.  He  lives,  to  the  last  moment 
of  his  life,  in  community  with  the  life  universal  ;  and, 
instead  of  being  extinguished  before  the  bodily  dis- 
solution, his  soul  survives  yet  awhile,  in  the  impulse  of 
happiness  it  has  given,  in  the  love  it  has  left. 

Rosny  has  given  us  the  reverse  case  in  the  painful 
and  over-elaborate  study  called  "  Le  Termite."  Noel 
Servaise,  destroyed  piecemeal  by  bodily  pain,  is  narrow- 
ing closer  and  closer  ;  his  tortured  nerves  perceive  other 
folk  only  as  obstacles  and  enemies,  the  world  as  a  vague, 

16 


242  ROSNY  AND 

dreadful  antagonist.  Each  time  that  the  crisis  of  his 
malady  is  over,  that  the  bodily  agony  is  staved  off  for 
a  time  by  liberation  from  the  constantly  re-forming 
calculus,  the  man  becomes  capable,  to  an  extent  at  least, 
of  liberation  from  his  hideous  self.  Liberated,  if  only 
in  the  possibility  of  selfish  love,  of  sensitiveness  to  the 
kindlier  aspects  of  Nature,  he  knows  joy,  which  is  a 
union,  however  humble,  with  what  is  not  his  own 
wretched  ego.  One  guesses  that  he  may,  if  time  be 
given,  become  almost  capable  of  love.  Or  will  the 
calculus,  inexorably  gathered  together  in  his  flesh,  turn 
him  back  in  agony  on  himself?  This  hero  of  the 
"  Termite  "  is  the  outcast  of  Nature,  the  creature  who 
should  never  have  been  ;  the  creature  born  of  the  selfish- 
ness of  others,  of  the  shortcomings  of  our  civilisation  ; 
the  creature  who  deserves  all  the  patience  and  under- 
standing and  tenderness  of  those  who,  unlike  himself, 
can  have  patience  and  understanding  and  tenderness. 
Of  Rosny,  further.  The  pedantic  element  shows 
itself,  like  nearly  all  intellectual  and  moral  defects,  in  a 
lack  of  harmony  between  the  writer  and  his  subject ; 
between  the  observer  and  the  world  ;  in  a  disproportion 
a  separateness  between  the  individual  ego  and  the 
myriad  multifold  egos  all  round — the  besetting  sin  of 
the  whole  French  school  of  novelists,  beginning  with 
Balzac.  Hence  he  lacks  that  sense  of  the  mystery  of 
other  folk,  nay,  almost  of  the  mystery  of  oneself, 
which  makes  the  very  greatest  novelists  so  respectfully 
delicate  in  their  handling  of  the  human  soul,  even  the 
cynical  Stendhal,  the  jocular  Thackeray  ;  and  which 
distinguishes  so  immeasurably  the  two  greatest  novelists 
of  our  age — Browning  and  Tolstoi.  Rosny  thinks 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL  NOVEL      243 

that  he  can  penetrate  into  a  human  creature  as  he 
could  penetrate,  with  knife  and  microscope,  into  a 
plant  or  a  dead  limb.  He  does  not  feel  that  the 
reality  of  another  can  never  be  coextensive,  much  less 
consubstantial,  with  any  formula,  or  definition,  or 
description ;  since  our  formulas,  definitions,  and 
descriptions  are  limited  and  conditioned  by  our 
individual  experience  and  nature.  The  world  is  so 
vast,  and  every  human  soul  so  immense  (the  human 
soul  which  is,  who  knows  ?  perhaps  the  close-packed 
soul  stuff  of  a  thousand  ancestors),  that  whenever  we 
paint,  nay,  see  any  portion  thereof  in  minutest  detail, 
we  do  so  at  the  price  of  a  monstrously  disproportionate 
picture  or  vision  ;  the  flea's  proboscis  becomes  that  of 
an  elephant,  while  the  table  or  chair  hard  by  becomes, 
by  comparison,  mere  toy-box  furniture.  And  Rosny, 
with  unsuspecting  awkwardness,  calmly  dismembering 
human  life,  does  often  present  us  with  such  microscope 
nightmares.  I  am  thinking  of  portions  of  the  other- 
wise splendid  a  Indomptee,"  but  particularly  of  that 
gruesome  book  "  Le  Termite."  I  do  not  blame  him 
in  the, least  for  deliberately  analysing  physical  pain  and 
its  moral  miseries.  Such  an  analysis  is,  of  course, 
atrociously  painful  to  the  reader  ;  but  is  it  not  fair  that 
we  should  be  pained  sometimes,  in  order  to  learn  what 
pain  others  are  feeling  ?  And  is  it  not  as  well  that  we 
should  realise  the  wretched  ruin  of  so  many  lives, 
considering  that  we  have  it  in  our  power  very  often 
similarly  to  ruin  the  life  of  our  neighbours,  our  children, 
and  of  the  unborn  generations  ?  The  moral  object  is 
surely  legitimate.  What  I  object  to  in  Rosny — and, 
for  the  matter  of  that,  in  nearly  all  novelists  of  the 


244  ROSNY   AND 

French  analytic  school — is  that  the  psychological  method 
is  faulty.  All  these  accounts  of  pain,  greater  or  less, 
lack  one  of  pain's  most  essential  features — its  evanes- 
cence ;  as,  for  the  matter  of  that,  all  analysis  of  life 
lacks  life's  chief  characteristic — change,  instability. 
Rosny's  hero  probably  did  not  realise  the  agonies  of 
his  crisis,  once  those  agonies  were  over,  in  anything 
like  the  way  in  which  we  are  made  to  realise  them  ; 
for  there  is  in  literature  a  power  of  fixing  impression, 
making  it  uniform  and  uniformly  continuous,  causing, 
as  it  were,  the  water  which  would  run  off  in  its  natural 
channels  to  return  for  ever  and  ever  by  the  artificial 
mechanism  of  a  fountain.  And  this,  the  chief  fault  of 
Rosny,  is  the  fault,  of  course,  of  less  sincere  and  less 
genial  writers,  like  Huysmans.  In  the  case  of  Rosny's 
Noel  Servaise,  life,  however  honeycombed  by  suffering, 
was  not  composed  solely  thereof ;  however  huge  a 
minute,  nay,  a  second,  of  pain,  the  painless  minutes  must 
take  up  a  certain  room ;  they  are  not  eliminated  by  life, 
as  they  are  eliminated  by  literary  craft.  If  the  novelist 
is  to  magnify,  and  all  literature  must  magnify,  it  is  not 
fair  to  magnify  only  one  kind  of  life's  many  tissues. 
But  the  analytical  Frenchman — and,  alas  !  this  great 
and  delightful  Rosny,  worse  almost  than  any — screw 
and  screw  at  their  lenses,  magnify  till  the  image  en- 
larges to  bursting,  and  begins,  luckily  for  the  operator, 
to  swim  in  mist. 

This  tendency  is  what  makes  much  of  the  odiousness 
of  French  novelists'  treatment  of  female  characters  ; 
they  are  not  all  cads,  they  are  often  merely  literary 
pedants.  Certainly,  of  all  modern  Frenchmen,  Rosny  is 
the  most  respectful,  the  most  tender  and  serious  in  his 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL      245 

attitude  to  women.  The  young  doctoress,  Nell  Horn, 
above  all,  Eve,  in  the  "  Bilateral,"  are  among  the  finest 
and  most  charming  women  in  all  fiction.  They  are 
charming,  they  are  such  as  we  see  them,  as  a  result  of 
Rosny's  painting  ;  but  the  process  of  painting,  so  long 
as  it  goes  on,  is  often  such  as  one  can  barely  watch 
without  anger.  Take  that  Eve  in  the  "  Bilateral." 
Rosny  gives  us  the  material,  he  puts  into  our  posses- 
sion the  sympathetic  spell  which  makes  her  live,  live 
with  extraordinary  fulness  and  charm  of  life  ;  but  at 
the  same  time  he  gives  an  account  of  her  which  is  false, 
and  which  we  banish  at  once  into  the  limbo  of  the  un- 
lifelike.  This  charming  young  girl,  under  all  her 
emancipated  ideas,  is  but  a  new-born  woman  awaking 
to  her  woman's  cravings  for  love  and  motherhood  ; 
overcome  sometimes  by  joy,  sometimes  by  sadness,  she 
knows  not  why,  wondering  vaguely  she  knows  not  at 
what.  But  she  cannot,  for  all  her  familiarity  with 
free-spoken  men  and  pseudo-scientific  books,  she  can- 
not, in  her  young  entireness,  be  conscious  of  the  mean- 
ing of  it  all ;  she  cannot,  however  well  she  knows  the 
names,  realise,  in  her  Jack  of  all  experience  of  life  and 
change,  understand  such  things  as  phases  and  crises* 
Now  Rosny,  perpetually  harping  on  such  matters, 
perpetually  offering  us  his  explanation  of  Eve's  feel- 
ings, turns  the  poor  girl  into  a  sort  of  walking 
physiologico-psychologic  demonstration ;  we  see  not) 
merely  what  the  girl  sees  of  herself,  but  her  poor, 
innermost  nature  laid  bare  by  the  kind  but  intolerably 
blundering  hands  of  a  pedant.  In  his  immortal 
Natacha,  Tolstoi  has  given  us  the  case  of  a  girl 
situated  much  like  Eve  ;  she  also  is  traversing  a 


246  ROSNY   AND 

crisis.  We  know  it,  but  she  does  not  ;  because  Tolstoi 
respectfully  refrains  from  telling  us  in  the  girl's  presence 
the  secrets  which  she  cannot  yet  comprehend.  For 
surely  there  is  one  thing  which  youth  cannot  know, 
which  only  experience  can  teach  :  that  youth  is  a  period 
of  stress,  that  experience  will  come,  that  life  is  but 
phase,  change,  and  the  manifestation  of  hidden  forces. 

There  is,  perhaps,  a  dash  of  pedantry — there  is 
certainly  the  usual  French  seeking  after  literary 
novelty,  apart  from  real  interest,  in  Rosny's  strange 
descriptions  of  nature.  One  is  worried  at  familiar 
sights  being  described  in  obscure  terms  of  chemistry 
or  botany  ;  one  resents,  in  this  case  also,  quite  simple 
things,  seen  every  day  with  the  corner  of  the  eye, 
being  elaborated  into  marvellous  enigmatic  visions, 
which  strain  one's  sight  and  intelligence.  But  for  all 
this  Rosny  does  give  one,  like  no  other  modern, 
impressions  of  the  splendour  and  mystery  mingled  in 
everyday  things.  Nay,  the  very  unintelligibility  of  the 
phraseology  of  those  names  of  acids  and  minerals  and 
astronomic  and  botanic  details  reproduce  some  of  the 
unintelligible  impressions  which  make  the  wonderfulness 
of  certain  skies,  certain  night  effects,  tangles  of  vegeta- 
tion, weirdnesses  of  town  rubbish  and  factory  outlines, 
Aladdin's  palaces,  built  up  we  know  not  of  what, 
labyrinths  and  galaxies  composed  of  unguessable 
material.  In  this,  as  in  his  sympathy  for  profoundly 
intuitive  natures,  nay,  with  the  life  of  dumb  creatures, 
of  plants,  and  of  seas  and  skies,  Rosny  seems  to  free 
us  from  the  weariness  of  those  tiresome,  workaday 
formulas  by  which  mankind,  as  it  has  reduced  the 
material  world  into  a  kind  of  Army  and  Navy  Stores 


THE   FRENCH    ANALYTICAL   NOVEL      247 

for  its  feeding  and  housing,  has  reduced  its  own 
thoughts  and  feelings  to  little  better  than  a  catalogue 
of  the  world's  qualities  as  seen  by  the  haberdasher 
and  the  caterer  ;  nothing  left  for  other  creatures,  for 
the  germs  which  live  invisible  in  everything,  or  for 
the  angels  who  guide  the  storms  and  the  stars. 


Ill 


Of  course,  Balzac  was  not  the  root  of  what  I  should 
call  the  psychological  and  literary  nuisance  in  the 
novel :  the  looking  at  life  as  a  subject  for  analysis  and 
description,  instead  of  analysing  and  describing  such 
parts  of  life  as  had  been  found  interesting  or  fascinat- 
ing in  the  process  of  living. 

It  was  not  his  example  which  made  the  modern 
French  novel  go  the  way  it  has  gone  ;  his  example 
would  never  have  affected  the  Russians  or  the 
English.  If  Balzac  has  unduly  influenced  his  country- 
men, and  influenced  them  by  his  faults  even  more 
than  by  his  great  qualities,  it  is  surely  because 
those  faults  were  inherent  in  the  French  literary  type 
of  our  century — faults  due  to  the  very  strength  of 
literary  energy,  the  very  richness  of  intellectual  per- 
ception by  which  modern  France  has  differed  from  its 
more  practical,  more  sentimental,  and,  at  all  events, 
duller  and  more  tongue-tied  neighbours. 

Balzac's  method — for  it  became  a  method,  and  one 
universally  imitated — consisted  in  writing  about  human 
beings,  not  according  to  the  manner  in  which  they,  or 
the  image  of  them,  had  affected  him  ;  but  according 


248  ROSNY   AND 

to  the  manner  in  which  they  would  present  a  most 
definite  diagram,  at  best  a  most  picturesque  outline. 
He  describes  not  characters  with  one  exaggerated 
peculiarity,  but  one  exaggerated,  isolated  peculiarity 
with  a  human  person,  a  vague  puppet,  sometimes 
barely  more  than  a  name  and  a  physical  presentment — 
Hulot,  Grandet,  Pons,  Rastignac — attached  to  it.  As 
the  medical  boarder  in  the  Pension  Vauquer,  n&e  de 
Conflan,  says  of  him,  the  Pere  Goriot  is  nothing  but 
the  Bump  of  Philoprogenitiveness.  The  rest  of  the 
brain,  one  might  say,  has  been  cut  away.  Now  the 
real  way  in  which  the  excessive  preponderance  of  one 
portion  of  a  character  manifests  itself  is  by  subordinat- 
ing, silencing,  pushing  into  a  corner,  sending  to  sleep 
the  other  portion  ;  but,  for  all  this  to  happen,  those 
other  portions  must  exist.  To  begin  with,  every 
human  being  possesses,  besides  his  more  individual 
character,  a  sort  of  average  character  as  human  being, 
inherited  from  his  ancestors  and  acquired  from  his 
neighbours  ;  the  psychological  life  of  the  one-sided 
person,  of  the  monomaniac,  consists  in  the  gradual 
victory  over  this  character  (and  over  everything  in 
himself  to  which  it  is  attached),  or  in  the  gradual 
enslaving  thereof  in  the  service  of  that  one  faculty. 
Balzac's  fault  is  to  disregard  or  hide  this  uneven  battle 
within  the  individual,  and  substitute  for  it  the  mere 
outer  fight  with  other  folk  and  with  circumstances  ; 
hence,  instead  of  the  life  of  a  human  being,  we  get  a 
sociological  diagram  of  forces  and  resistances.  In 
order  to  realise  this  fact,  one  should  compare  Balzac 
with  another  novelist,  but  belonging  to  the  human, 
non-analytic,  non-literary  sort,  namely  Thackeray,  in  his 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL    NOVEL      249 

treatment  of  one-sided  character.  Take  Colonel  New- 
come.  He,  too,  might  have  been  described  as  a  bosse  de 
la  faternite  rather  than  a  whole  human  being.  But  in 
him  paternal  fondness  is  connected  with  a  half  dozen 
cognate  qualities.  It  goes  over  into  tenderness  towards 
all  young  and  weak  creatures,  it  borders  on  high 
chivalry  ;  for  qualities  produce  one  another.  But  if 
Thackeray  seem  insufficiently  typical  in  his  work,  and 
Colonel  Newcome  seem  insufficiently  paternal,  take 
Shakespeare,  and  place  by  the  side  of  Goriot  no  less 
a  father  thai  King  Lear.  For  him  paternal  infatuation 
arises  not,  as  with  Colonel  Newcome,  from  readiness 
to  love,  but  from  a  mania  for  being  loved  ;  and  this 
strange  selfishness  mixed  with  generosity  goes  over  into 
jealousy,  graspiness,  injustice,  and  that  tragic  alterna- 
tion of  rage  and  weakness,  of  proud  raillery  and  childish 
complaint.  But  Pere  Goriot's  paternal  infatuation 
arises  from  nothing,  and  is  connected  with  nothing  ; 
it  is  inorganic,  at  best  utterly  maniacal — in  truth  it  is 
a  literary  diagram.  How  unlike  anything  living  must 
needs  be  to  a  diagram,  we  can  all  of  us  study  in 
observing  one  of  the  most  one-sided,  nay,  one  of 
the  most  maniacal  varieties  of  human  being — the  vain 
man.  In  him  we  can  watch  how,  where  the  vanity 
does  not  interfere,  qualities  of  a  very  different  kind 
can  be  very  active — intellectual  interest,  kindliness, 
honesty,  the  very  qualities  which  take  a  man  most 
out  of  himself,  the  most  incompatible  with  vanity  ; 
or  else  we  can  watch,  as  in  Meredith's  "  Egoist,"  how 
vanity,  instead  of  obliterating,  will  merely  appropriate 
and  enslave  such  qualities  as  cksh  with  it,  until  a  man's 
genuine  impulses,  his  sincerest  thoughts  and  actions 


250  ROSNY   AND 

change  their  nature,  find  a  new  basis,  and  become  mere 
lies. 

Different  as  are,  for  instance,  Flaubert  and  Zola, 
they  belong,  nevertheless,  to  the  same  school  as  Balzac, 
if  we  compare  them  with  Tolstoi,  Dostoievsky,  or  even 
Bjornsen.  Flaubert,  with  his  effects  produced  by 
extreme  elimination  of  detail,  and  Zola,  so  brimful 
and  often  overwhelming,  are  yet  alike  in  the  funda- 
mental character  of  writers  whose  knowledge  proceeds 
from  deliberate  study,  and  whose  interest  in  the  subject 
is  due  to  its  being  a  subject,  and  a  good  one.  One 
has,  not  unfrequently,  the  feeling  that  these  great  men 
have  sat  down  in  front  of  the  portion  of  life  they  have 
undertaken  to  treat,  after  casting  about  for  months 
and  weeks  for  something  to  write  about,  and  one 
remembers  the  astonishing  lamentations  of  certain  con- 
temporary novelists  interviewed  by  M.  Huret,  making 
enumerations  of  every  recondite  unspeakableness  with 
the  melancholy  comment,  "on  a  deja  fait  cela — on  a 
meme  fait  cela."  About  all  writers  of  this  school, 
major  and  minor,  gods  or  mice,  it  is  clear  to  the  reader 
that  there  is  no  reason  for  supposing  them  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  life  in  any  form,  to  be  alive,  or  to 
have  been  alive.  Were  it  not  that  we  know,  from 
different  sources,  that  novels  are  written  by  men,  and 
that  we  run  easily  to  anthropomorphism  in  all  matters, 
we  might  quite  well  put  down  "  Le  Pere  Goriot,"  "  La 
Cousine  Bette,"  "  Mme.  Bovary,"  "  L'Assommoir," 
and  all  the  novels  of  MM.  de  Goncourt  and  of  M. 
Huysmans  to  the  agency  of  some  more  or  less  divine 
Chance  in  the  manner  of  Lucretius,  or  to  some  wonder- 
ful literary  machine,  phonograph  and  camera  combined 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL      251 

with  some  contriving  and  superposing  mechanism  for 
the  automatic  production  of  types. 

Opposite  to  this  school  of  analytical,  literary,  profes- 
sional novelists  like  Balzac,  there  exists,  in  sharpest 
contrast,  the  school  of  sympathising,  personal,  in  a  way 
unprofessional  novelists,  whose  greatest  representative 
is  Tolstoi  ;  and  which,  with  no  idea  of  derivation,  but 
merely  to  give  one  of  the  most  marvellous  literary 
personalities  his  due,  I  should  call  the  school  of 
Stendhal. 

The  novel  of  this  school,  which  has  representatives 
in  all  countries — for  the  greatest  novelists,  from  the 
author  of  "  Manon  Lescaut "  to  the  author  of  "  Vanity 
Fair,"  all  belong  to  it — the  novel  of  this  school  seems 
not  written,  but  lived.  It  affects  us  as  being  so  much 
of  life  which  the  author  has  gone  through,  and  he 
seems  to  us  to  be  lurking  always  in  one — nay,  some- 
times in  all — of  the  characters  :  that  life  has  indeed 
been  lived  by  the  author,  not  in  the  body,  most  likely, 
but  in  the  spirit  ;  he  has  really  been  one  of  those 
characters  in  the  fervour  of  sympathetic  creation,  for 
there  is  nothing  here  which  has  been  observed,  con- 
structed, invented — it  has  been  a  reality,  an  inevitable 
sequence  in  the  imaginative  experience  of  the  writer. 
What  such  novelists  tell  us  has  the  weight  of  the  words 
of  an  eyewitness  ;  it  has  even,  frequently,  increasing 
that  weight,  an  eyewitness's  vagueness  and  unaccount- 
ableness.  For  the  man  in  whose  presence  (or  in  whose 
soul)  certain  things  have  actually  taken  place,  does  not 
know  about  them  with  the  same  sort  of  clearness  as 
the  man  who  has  followed  a  deliberate  experiment,  or 
reconstructed  the  how  things  must  have  happened  by  a 


252  ROSNY  AND 

process  of  circumstantial  logic.  And  there  is  in  life — 
life  spontaneous,  flowing,  complete,  not  life  artificially 
arranged  by  experiment — an  inevitable  share  of  vague- 
ness, due  to  the  fact  that  all  life  is,  after  all,  the  per- 
ception thereof  by  one  creature  at  one  moment,  full 
therefore  of  gaps  and  lapses.  Neither  is  there  in  life 
any  unity  of  point  of  view,  hence  no  stable  system  of 
outlines  or  of  colouring.  Nothing  is  less  like  life,  that 
is  to  say,  like  our  experience,  than  that  marvellous 
solidity,  all-roundness,  fulness,  and  almost  distressing 
projection  of  the  analytic  school  of  novel.  It  is  quite 
possible — contrary  to  the  opinion  of  impressionists — 
that  a  painted  picture  full  of  extreme  detail  should 
give  us  a  satisfactory  sense  of  realisation  ;  because, 
like  the  picture  itself,  the  real  objects  are  in  most 
cases  stationary,  allowing  us  to  take  in  their  detail, 
deliberately  to  sit  and  stare.  But  life  does  not  allow 
you  to  sit  and  stare  ;  at  least,  it  is  not  the  same 
portion  of  life  which  we  are  sitting  in  front  of  and 
staring  at.  It  is  only  by  photographing  the  single 
instances,  and  then  patching  them  together  by  a  sort 
of  reversed  analysis ;  it  is  only  by  thinking  it  out  that 
we  ever  know  very  clearly  how  anything  ever  happens. 
Clearness  is  a  desideratum,  a  product  of  the  human 
mind,  which  life  itself  has  no  use  for.  Hence  there 
is  something  convincing  in  the  very  vagueness  with 
which,  as  with  a  real  atmosphere,  the  unanalytical 
novelists  frequently  envelop  events  and  persons.  We 
feel  Manon  Lescaut  to  have  lived  and  died,  because 
we  feel  Des  Grieux's  love  and  despair.  She  is  a 
phantom,  but  a  real  one,  as  are  the  lovers  and  sweet- 
hearts unseen  by  us,  but  not  unfelt,  of  our  friends. 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL       253 

We  understand  Mme.  Bovary,  Cousine  Bette,  Rougon, 
Numa  Roumestan,  or  the  hero  of  "  En  Route  "  ;  and 
in  a  certain  measure  we  do  not  understand,  we  cannot 
account  for  all  their  doings,  Natacha,  Levine,  the  little 
heroine  of  Bjornsen's  u  In  God's  Ways,"  or  Stendhal's 
Duchess,  or  Julien  Sorel ;  but,  unless  we  are  singularly 
presumptuous  and  deluded,  neither  do  we  understand 
with  any  such  fearful  certainty  our  nearest  and  dearest, 
nay,  ourselves. 

As  it  is  with  the  personages,  so  it  is,  to  a  certain 
extent,  with  the  places.  We  know  that  town  in 
Norway,  that  house  at  Moscow,  with  the  mixture  of 
clearness  and  vagueness  of  real  places  in  our  memory. 
Above  all,  with  a  very  definite  and  special  emotion  ; 
whereas  the  places  in  Balzac,  Zola,  and  even  in 
Flaubert  (think  of  Flaubert's  Carthage  !)  are  such  as 
we  know  very  distinctly  at  the  moment  of  looking 
at  them,  even  as  we  know  pictures,  but  with  no  mood 
attaching  to  them,  and  quite  without  that  indefinable 
familiarity  which  tells  us,  however  vaguely,  about  the 
omitted  parts  :  where  that  road  leads  to,  and  what  there 
is  on  the  other  side  of  that  block  of  houses  or  group 
of  trees  ;  a  sort  of  halo  of  knowledge,  which  means 
that,  in  body  or  in  spirit,  we  have  been  in  those 
places. 


IV 


There  is  another,  and  a  far  graver  objection  to  be 
made  against  this,  that  I  have  called  the  professional  or 
literary  school  of  novel  :  it  is  morally  arid  in  its 
perpetual  pessimism  ;  it  refuses  the  reader  what,  after 


254  ROSNY   AND 

all,  we  claim  from  literature,  as  from  other  art,  more 
imperiously  than  we  claim  skill,  imagination,  know- 
ledge, or  even  the  sense  of  life,  and  that  is  the  sense 
that  life  is  good.  We  are  made  neither  more  happy  nor 
more  fit  for  happiness  by  the  perpetual  insistence  on 
the  ugly  side  of  things,  the  perpetual  assurance  of  this 
hopelessness.  Moreover,  if  we  are  at  all  normally 
constituted,  with  the  normal  experience  of  good  and 
evil,  we  recognise  not  merely  that  such  a  view  of  life 
is  false,  but  also,  when  it  becomes  universal  in  a  writer 
or  a  school  of  writers,  that  it  is  not  at  all — how  express 
it  ? — well,  not  at  all  noble.  For  such  a  pessimistic 
attitude — the  attitude  of  Flaubert,  Zola,  the  Goncourts, 
Maupassant,  let  alone  all  the  little  masters — renders  the 
attainment  of  artistic  impressiveness  quite  infinitely 
easier.  Nay,  it  becomes  an  almost  mechanical,  auto- 
matic method  for  awakening  the  kind  of  emotion 
which  is,  after  all,  the  crudest  of  any — the  black  mood. 
It  is  significant  that  whereas  Shakespeare  alternates 
serenity  with  gloom,  sadness  with  joy,  expressing  life, 
and  various  aspects  in  words  sometimes  heroically  gay, 
sometimes  bitter  and  hopeless,  the  lesser  men,  Marston, 
Webster,  Tourneur  or  Ford,  know  only  horrors  and 
misery,  and  only  a  philosophy  of  pessimistic  vanity  or 
stoical  indifference.  For  an  unmixed  kind  of  emotion 
is  easier  to  deal  with  than  any  kind  of  alternation, 
a  harmony  is  easier  to  construct  out  of  few  elements 
than  many  ;  and  of  all  kinds  of  emotions  the  gloomy  is 
the  easiest  to  play  upon  ;  an  artistic  element  more  easy 
to  manage.  It  takes  the  highest  genius  to  mingle  and 
harmonise  the  sad  and  the  joyous,  the  easily  lived 
and  the  painfully  felt,  as  in  Tolstoi's  marvellous 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL      255 

symphonies.  And  it  is  even  more  difficult — im- 
possible for  any  length  of  time — to  play  on  the 
tonalities  of  unmixed  optimism.  Hence  it  is  quite 
natural  that  a  people  so  artistically  constructed  as  the 
French,  a  school  of  writers  so  superbly  literary,  should 
succumb  to  artistic  dodgery,  to  school  methods  and 
royal  roads  ;  the  novel,  like  a  certain  sort  of  painting, 
has  become  in  France  so  organised  as  to  be  virtually 
a  la  portee  de  tous.  Now,  of  such  school  methods  and 
literary  royal  roads,  pessimism  is  one  of  the  most 
obvious.  It  is  a  method  and  a  mannerism. 

Pessimism  gives,  moreover,  a  false  sense  of  superi- 
ority both  to  the  writer  and  the  reader.  The  reader 
feels,  in  dealing  with  imaginary  miseries  as  matters 
of  course,  that  he  is  endowed  with  fortitude  and  not 
to  be  duped  by  the  powers  above  ;  the  writer  gains 
a  Promethean  attitude  which  immensely  increases  his 
sense  of  power.  Nay,  the  very  sensitiveness  and 
honesty  of  a  man  will  be  warped  into  such  a  cheap 
view  of  life.  It  takes  an  enormous  dose  of  either  to 
resist  the  tendency  to  be  pitiful  or  sarcastic  where  there 
is  nothing  to  be  pitiful  or  sarcastic  about ;  one  needs 
to  be  very  honest  to  be,  so  to  speak,  theoretically,  nay 
more,  rhetorically  honest  with  life's  deserts  and  short- 
comings. And  the  literary  instinct,  the  artistic 
traditions  of  our  French  contemporaries  have  apparently 
cost  them  this  higher,  this  thoroughly  independent 
sensitiveness  and  honesty  towards  life. 

Of  none  of  them  does  one  feel  this  so  acutely,  I 
think,  as  of  Maupassant,  and  in  exact  proportion  to 
his  admirable  literary  qualities.  Think  of  a  book  like 
"  Bel  Ami."  Everyone,  alas,  who  has  lived  at  all  in 


256  ROSNY   AND 

the  world  (and  particularly  in  the  plain  speaking  world 
of  the  Latins)  has  heard  stories  like  those  making  up 
this  novel  ;  and  has,  many  a  time,  had  people  pointed 
out  who  would  have  fitted  into  it.  But  all  this,  as  one 
has  caught  whiffs  from  drains  and  sinks,  with  tolerably 
breathable  air  between.  Maupassant  seems  to  live 
permanently  in  these  stenches,  his  thoughts,  during  the 
elaboration  of  a  volume  of  three  hundred  and  fifty 
closely  printed  pages,  know  nothing  else  ;  and  that  he 
should  have  enjoyed  the  writing,  and  any  person  the 
reading,  strikes  me  as  scarcely  human.  It  is  by 
comparison  with  a  book  like  "  Bel  Ami  "  that  one  sees 
what  it  is  that  makes  Zola  endurable.  That  very 
element  which  mars  the  homogeneousness  of  his  work 
and  takes  from  its  trustworthiness,  that  Victor  Hugo- 
like  tendency  to  see  things  in  fantastic  lights,  to 
translate  the  (alas  !  normally)  nasty  into  the  super- 
humanly  terrible.  This  allows  him  to  write,  or  rather 
enables  us  to  read,  books  on  such  subjects  as 
"  Germinal  "  and  even  "  La  Terre."  We  can  survive 
(it  seems)  in  madness  situations  which  would  kill  the 
sane.  The  mind,  diverted  to  feelings  of  strength  and 
wonder,  can  stand  the  strain  of  otherwise  unendurable 
horrors ;  and,  in  the  presence  of  Zola's  wicked  Earth 
sending  up  villains  as  it  sends  up  wheat  ears,  with 
monstrous  indifferent  fertility  ;  in  the  presence  of  that 
mine  of  his  which  swallows  cartloads  of  human  life  and 
suffering,  we  can  endure  sights  which  would  be 
unendurable  shown  in  their  real  proportions,  and 
shown  as  the  only  reality  existing. 

But  Maupassant  eliminates  with  unswerving  instinct 
everything   which    is   not   mean,    and   groups   into   a 


THE    FRENCH  ANALYTICAL  NOVEL      257 

perfectly    graduated     pattern    everything     which     is 
thoroughly  ignoble.      In  real  life  things  are  only  very 
occasionally  what  we  call  artistic  :  reality  is  not  always 
ironical    any    more   than    it    is    always    in    agreeable 
perspective.     Within  sight  of  my  house  is  a  hill,  with 
trees  and  houses,  which  is  quite  perfect  as  to  arrange- 
ment ;    but    all    around    are   other   hills,   fields,   trees, 
houses,  which  seem  all  scattered  any  how.     Similarly, 
I    know    of    several    female    orphanages    which    were 
founded  in  a  most  uninteresting  way  by  quite  respect- 
able women  ;  while  I  know  only  one  orphanage  of  the 
sort  which  was  founded  by  a  lady  of  exceedingly  light 
manners.     The    French    novelist,    who    is    an    artist 
(sometimes    much    more    so    than    the    contemporary 
French  painter),  refuses   to  speak   of  the   orphanages 
founded  by  the  respectable  ladies,  as  the  painter  would 
refuse    to    paint    the    hills    and    houses    and    trees   all 
scattered  at  random  ;   he  spots  at  once  and  instantly 
notes  down   the   disreputable   lady's  foundation  :    that 
has  a  point,  makes  a  pattern,  is  worth  talking  about  ! 
What  sort  of  reality,  what  picture  of  life,  can  such  men 
give  us  ?   They  can  no  more  be  trusted  than  the  etcher, 
who  looks  out  for  lines  converging  into  head  and  tail- 
pieces, can  be  trusted  for  a  faithful  statement  of  ten 
miles  of  road.     The  artistic  sense — the  artistic  sense 
applied  to  literature,  which  is  at  once  infinitely  less  and 
infinitely  more  than  art — the  dramatic  love  for  contrast, 
irony,  and  climax  are  as   fatal  to   truthfulness  in  the 
novel  as  any  three  unities  and  other  classical  require- 
ments were  fatal,  once  upon  a  time,  to  truthfulness  in 
the  French  play. 

But,  you  will  say,  why  ask  for  truthfulness  ?    why 


258  ROSNY   AND 

not  be  satisfied  with  what  these  men  really  give,  which 
is  arfy  and  not  ask  them  for  what  they  only  say  they 
give,  which  is  reality  ?  Have  we  not  been  seeing  that 
real  reality,  objective  or  subjective,  is  unattainable  in 
the  novel ;  that  its  creations  are,  when  most  scientific, 
mere  bird-women  and  men-horses,  chimaeras,  fantastic 
monsters  ? 

True.  But  there  is,  in  this  curious  anomalous  art  of 
literature,  an  artistic  quality  without  complete  analogy 
in  painting,  or  sculpture,  or  music,  and  which  tran- 
scends all  external  convergence,  pattern,  climax,  and 
the  rest.  And  there  is  within  the  power  of  the 
novelist  a  kind  of  reality,  a  quality  which  affects  us 
as  truthfulness,  which  far  surpasses  in  efficacy  the 
utmost  fidelity  to  single  cases,  or  the  highest  clearness 
of  typical  diagrams.  What  this  quality  consists  in,  on 
what  it  depends,  is  one  of  the  many  mysteries  of  the 
mysterious  province  of  aesthetics,  and  even  to  exemplify 
it  would  require  as  many  notes  as  these,  and  about  a 
totally  different  set  of  writers.  We  should  have,  above 
all,  to  speak  of  those  two  most  different  men,  who  are 
yet  alike  in  their  special  supremacy,  Stendhal  and 
Tolstoi  ....  But  the  mere  mention  of  their  names  will 
suggest  to  the  reader — at  least,  as  a  matter  of  feeling — 
what  is  this  quality  in  the  novel  which  transcends  all 
minor  artistic  qualities,  and  what  is  this  un-real 
truthfulness,  by  which  the  greatest  novelists  subdue 
our  souls  more  efficaciously  than  by  any  detail  or  any 
diagram  !  The  only  name  I  can  find  for  it  is  sympathy, 
or  passionate  personal  interest.  Stendhal,  Thackeray, 
Tolstoi,  even  our  golden  but  clay-footed  idol,  Mere- 
dith, care  for  what  they  write  about  more  than  for 


THE   FRENCH   ANALYTICAL   NOVEL      259 

their  own  writing.  They  are,  whether  cosmopolitan 
cynics,  bourgeois  moralists,  religious  reformers,  or 
harum-scarum  chivalrous  romanticists,  all  alike  in 
their  passionate  preference  for  their  Duchesses,  their 
Sorels,  their  Becky  Sharps,  and  their  Colonel  New- 
comes  ;  their  Pierres,  Levines,  Annas,  and  Natachas  ; 
their  Beauchamps  and  Diana  Warwicks.  And  this 
most  potent  aesthetic  magic  acting  within  acts  on  their 
reader.  He  is  convinced,  enthralled ;  he  is  satisfied  that 
all  this  must  be  real,  since  he  is  made  to  love  or  hate  it. 
These  thoughts  on  realism,  satisfactory  and  un- 
satisfactory, have  naturally  grouped  themselves  in  my 
mind,  around  the  work  of  J.  H.  Rosny,  because,  among 
French  novelists,  he  is,  perhaps,  the  most  important, 
since  Stendhal,  who  has  cared  for  his  subject  more 
than  for  his  treatment.1 

1  The  above  was  written  more  than  ten  years  before  the  appear- 
ance of  the  incomparable  "  Jean-Christophe"  of  M.  Remain 
Holland. 


THE    ECONOMIC    PARASITISM    OF 
WOMEN 


THE   ECONOMIC   PARASITISM   OF 
WOMEN 

"  '"pHESE  lovely  ladies  and  the  like  of  them,  are  the 
very  head  and  front  of  mischief ;  first  because 
.  .  .  they  have  it  in  their  power  to  do  whatever  they 
like  with  men  and  things,  and  yet  do  so  little  with 
either  ;  and,  secondly,  because,  by  very  reason  of  their 
beauty  and  virtue,  they  have  become  the  excuse  for 
all  the  iniquity  of  our  days  ;  it  seems  so  impossible 
that  the  social  order  which  produces  such  creatures 
should  be  a  wrong  one." — RUSKIN,  Fors  Clamgera^ 
Letter  80. 


I 


In  writing  this  preface  for  a  translation  of  Mrs. 
Stetson's  "  Women  and  Economics,"  and  in  recom- 
mending the  original  to  my  Anglo-Saxon  readers,  I 
am  accomplishing  the  duty  of  a  convert.  I  believe 
that  "  Women  and  Economics "  ought  to  open 
the  eyes,  and,  I  think,  also  the  hearts,  of  other 
readers,  because  it  has  opened  my  own,  to  the  real 
importance  of  what  is  known  as  the  Woman 

Question. 

263 


264    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

I  must  begin  by  confessing  that  the  question  which 
goes  by  that  name  had  never  attracted  my  attention, 
or,  rather,  that  I  had  on  every  occasion  evaded  and 
avoided  it.  Not  in  the  least,  however,  on  account 
of  any  ridicule  which  may  attach  to  it.  There  is, 
thank  goodness,  a  spice  of  absurdity  in  every  person, 
and  in  every  thing,  we  care  for  in  this  world  ;  and  the 
dear  little  old  lady  in  Henry  James's  "  Bostonians," 
who  pathetically  exclaims  :  "  And  would  you  condemn 
us  to  remain  mere  lovely  baubles  ? "  is  the  very 
creature  to  endear  a  cause :  she  is  the  Brother  Juniper, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  Woman  Question. 

My  vague  avoidance  of  the  movement  was  not  even 
due  to  the  perception  of  some  of  the  less  enjoyable 
peculiarities  of  its  devotees.  For  a  very  small  know- 
ledge of  mankind,  and  a  very  slight  degree  of  historical 
culture,  suffice  to  teach  one  that  it  is  not  the  well- 
balanced,  the  lucid,  the  sympathisingly  indulgent  or 
the  especially  gracious  and  graceful  among  human 
beings  who  are  employed  by  Providence  for  the  attack 
and  possible  destruction  of  long-organised  social  evils  : 
nay,  that  martyrdom  on  behalf  of  any  new  cause  begins, 
one  may  say,  by  the  constitution  of  the  martyr  as  an 
inevitable  eccentric,  unconscious  of  the  diffidence,  the 
scepticism,  the  sympathy,  the  sense  of  fitness  and 
measure  which  check,  divert,  or  hamper  normal  human 
beings.  The  early  saints,  judging  by  St.  Augustine's 
"  Confessions  "  and  the  "  Legenda  Aurea"  must  have 
been  appalling  prigs,  indifferent  to  family  affections, 
higher  literature,  hygiene,  and  rational  cookery  ;  while 
the  Hebrew  Prophets  were  quite  devoid  of  their 
historian's — M.  Kenan's — intelligent  indulgence  for 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN    265 

the  administrative  passion  of,  say,  Nebuchadnezzar, 
or  the  touching  pleasure  in  toilettes  of  Queen  Jezebel. 
And,  as  to  Socialists,  who  may  be  considered  as  the 
modern  representatives  of  such  virtuous  tactlessness, 
we  have  all  seen  something  of  them,  and  of  their  well- 
meant  efforts  to  clash  with  our  habits  of  dress  and 
manners,  and  to  ruffle  our  feelings  on  trifling  occasions. 
So  that  it  does  not  require  the  generalising  genius  of 
Dr.  Nordau,  clapping  Tolstoi  and  Ibsen  into  his 
specimen-box  of  "  Degenerates,"  to  tell  us  that  the 
Woman  Question,  Feminism,  is  likely  to  be  taken  up 
by  those  disconnected  and  disjointed  personalities  who 
are  attracted  by  every  other  kind  of  thing  in  ism  ; 
whose  power  consists  a  little  in  their  very  inferiority  ; 
and  whose  abnormal  and  often  morbid  "  pleasure  in 
saying  '  No '  "  (as  Nietzsche  puts  it)  is,  after  all,  alas  ! 
alas  !  so  very  necessary  in  this  world  of  quite  normally 
stupid  and  normally  selfish  and  normally  virtuous 
"  pleasure  in  saying  '  Yes.'  "... 

All  these  things  I  knew,  of  course,  and  I  do  not 
really  think  it  was  any  of  them  which  made  me  thus 
indifferent,  and  perhaps  even  a  little  hostile,  towards 
that  Woman  Question.  Indeed,  when  I  seek  in  the 
depths  of  my  consciousness,  I  think  the  real  mischief 
lay  in  that  word  "  Woman."  For  while  that  movement 
was,  of  course,  intended  to  break  down  the  barriers — 
legal,  professional,  educational  and  social — which  still 
exist  between  the  sexes,  the  inevitable  pitting  of  one  of 
these  sexes  against  the  other,  the  inevitable  harping  on 
what  can  or  cannot,  or  must  or  must  not  be  done,  said  or 
thought  by  women,  because  they  are  not  men  (women  ! 
women  !  everlastingly  women  !),  produced  a  special 


266    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

feeling,  pervading,  overpowering,  unendurable  (like 
that  of  visiting  a  harem  or  a  nunnery),  due  to  that 
perpetual  obtrusion  of  the  one  fact  of  sex,  while  the 
other  fact  of  human  nature,  the  universal,  chaste  fact 
represented  by  the  word  Homo  as  distinguished  from 
mere  Vir  and  Femina,  seemed  for  the  moment  lost 
sight  of. 

And  somehow — if  one  is  worth  one's  salt,  if  one 
feels  normal  kinship  not  only  with  the  talking  and 
(occasionally)  thinking  creatures  around  one,  but  also 
with  animals,  plants,  earth,  skies,  waters,  and  all  things 
past  and  present ;  if  one  be  able,  as  every  decent 
specimen  of  genus  Homo  must,  to  join  in  Francis  of 
Assisi's  "  Laudes  omnium  creaturarum  " — why,  then, 
one  feels  a  little  bored,  a  little  outraged,  nay,  even 
sickened,  by  this  everlasting  question  of  sex  qualifica- 
tions and  sex  disqualifications  ;  and  (very  unjustly, 
but  perhaps  therefore  very  naturally)  one  gets  to  shrink 
from  that  particular  question  exactly  because  it  is  the 
Woman  Question. 

Very  unjustly.  Let  me  repeat  that  ;  and  remind 
the  reader  that  what  I  am  describing  is  my  still 
unregenerate  state. 


II 


My  conversion  to  the  importance  of  the  Woman 
Question  was,  as  I  have  said,  the  work  of  "  Women 
and  Economics  "  ;  and  I  was  thus  converted  by  Mrs. 
Stetson's  unpretending  little  book,  because  in  it  the 
rights  and  wrongs  of  Femina,  das  Weib^  were  not 
merely  opposed  to  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  Vir,  der 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     267 

Mann,  but  subordinated  to  those  of  what  is,  after  all, 
a  bigger  item  of  creation  :  Homo,  der  Mensch. 

There  was  nothing  new  in  connecting  the  Woman 
Question  with  Economics.  If  I  may  judge  by  myself, 
the  majority  of  people  who  know  anything  of  Political 
Economy  must  be  accustomed  to  regard  such  questions 
as  marriage,  divorce,  prostitution,  the  legal  position  of 
mothers  and  fathers,  and  many  of  the  peculiarities  of 
law  and  custom  with  respect  to  the  sexes,  as  hinging 
upon  the  facts  of  wealth  production  and  distribution, 
tenure  of  soil,  heredity  and  division  of  property  ;  upon 
the  whole  immense  question  of  the  individual's  share 
in  the  products  of  nature,  of  invention  and  of  industry. 
Indeed,  I  much  suspect  that,  as  in  my  case,  many 
thinking  persons  shelve  the  question  of  women's 
abilities  and  disabilities  exactly  because  it  seems  to 
depend  almost  completely  upon  the  far  more  important 
question  of  the  redistribution  of  wealth  ;  to  demand 
only  a  minor  act  of  social  justice  and  social  practicality 
(bringing  much  waste  energy  under  cultivation) 
inevitably  involved  in  the  greater  act  of  social 
justice  and  social  practicality  which,  through  revolu- 
tion or  evolution,  must  needs  take  place  some  day 
or  other. 

The  originality,  the  scientific  soundness  and  moral 
efficacy  of  "  Women  and  Economics,"  appear  to  me 
to  lie  in  its  partially  reversing  this  fact  ;  and  in  its 
substituting  a  moral  and  psychological  reason  for  the 
rather  miraculous  mechanicalness  which  mars  every 
form  of  the  "  historical  materialism  "  of  the  Marxian 
school.  In  other  words,  this  book  shows  that  the 
present  condition  of  women — their  state  of  dependence, 


268     THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

tutelage,  and  semi-idleness  ;  their  sequestration  from 
the  discipline  of  competition  and  social  selection,  in 
fact  their  economic  parasitism — is  in  itself  a  most 
important  factor  in  the  wrongness  of  all  our  economic 
arrangements,  in  the  insufficient  production,  the  waste- 
ful expenditure,  the  degrading  mal-distribution  of 
wealth. 

This  main  thesis  of  the  book  can  be  summed  up  as 
follows : 

In  consequence  of  the  immense  benefit  which  a 
prolonged  stage  of  infancy,  that  is  to  say  of  intellectual 
and  moral  plasticity,  obtained  for  the  human  race,  all 
other  advantages  tended,  during  the  beginnings  of 
civilisation,  and  have  tended  ever  since,  to  be  sacrificed 
to  the  rearing  of  children  ;  and,  first  and  foremost 
there  has  been  sacrificed  to  it  that  equality  in  the 
power  of  obtaining  sustenance,  and  that  consequent 
mutual  independence  in  such  matters,  which  we  find 
existing  between  the  male  and  female  half  of  almost 
every  other  race  of  animal.  The  human  race,  as  has 
been  continually  demonstrated  (but,  perhaps,  nowhere 
so  well  as  in  the  studies  on  the  Play  Instinct  of  Pro- 
fessor Karl  Groos),  has  obtained  much  of  its  superiority 
through  the  partial  replacing  of  instinct  by  individual 
experiment  and  conscious  tradition  ;  but  this  has 
meant  that  the  human  infant  has  been  born  into  the 
world  far  less  mature,  far  less  typically  developed,  and 
far  less  near  to  independence  than  the  young  sheep 
which  can  walk  within  half  an  hour  of  its  birth,  let 
alone  of  the  chick  which  can  find  the  right  seed  almost 
as  soon  as  it  has  broken  out  of  the  shell.  In  pro- 
portion as  the  human  adult  has  become  rich  in 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN    269 

individual  powers,  has  the  human  infant  required  a 
longer  and  longer  period  of  tutelage  ;  with  the  result 
of  requiring  of  the  human  mother  a  longer  and  longer 
devotion  of  her  strength,  her  mind,  and,  even  more, 
of  her  time,  to  the  rearing  of  offspring.  The 
difference  between  the  female  of  genus  homo  and  the 
female  of  other  genera  has  therefore  originated  not  in 
a  longer  period  of  gestation  (for  that  of  the  horse,  for 
instance,  is  nearly  one-third  longer),  but  in  a  longer 
period  of  education  of  the  young.  The  different 
position  of  the  female  whom  we  call  Woman  is  due  to 
a  difference  not  in  physiological  but  in  sociological 
functions. 

For  the  longer  duration  of  human  infancy,  and, 
even  more,  the  greater  helplessness,  the  greater 
educability  of  the  human  infant,  has  made  it  difficult, 
and  in  some  cases  impossible,  for  the  human  mother  to 
find  food  for  herself,  let  alone  food  for  her  growing  and 
already  weaned  child.  Hence,  the  continuance  of  the 
human  race  has  called  forth  a  personage  who  (save 
among  birds,  so  oddly  like  human  beings  in  many 
things)  can  scarcely  be  said  to  exist  among  animals  : 
the  Father.  The  Father,  as  distinguished  from  the  mere 
begetter  ;  the  pseudo-father  in  many  stages  of  primi- 
tive life  (without  ironical  references  to  later  stages  of 
existence  !),  the  uncle,  the  maternal  male  relative,  the 
head  of  the  tribe,  the  patriarch  :  the  man  who  provides 
food  for  the  child,  and  food  for  the  woman  who  rears 
it ;  the  man  who  procures,  by  industry,  or  violence, 
a  home  (cave,  cabin,  tent,  or  house)  in  which  the 
woman  remains  with  the  children,  while  he  himself 
goes  forth  to  hunt,  to  tend  flocks,  to  make  captives, 


270    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

to  till  the  ground,  to  buy  and  sell  ;  and  in  modern 
times  to  do  those  hundred  curious  things  which,  pro- 
ducing no  tangible  product,  come  under  the  heading 
of  "making  money." 

This  all  seems  very  simple  ;  but  the  consequences 
are  complex.  The  female  homo,  thus  left  to  rear  the 
children  (and  do  what  else  she  can),  becomes,  what 
the  female  of  other  animals  is  not,  or  only  (in  birds 
and  certain  lower  creatures)  for  a  very  short  time,  the 
dependent  of  the  male  homo.  The  home  which  she 
inhabits  is  his  home,  the  food  she  eats  is  his  food,  the 
children  she  rears  become,  whether  father  or  only 
patriarch,  his  children  ;  and,  by  a  natural  devolution, 
she  herself,  the  woman  thus  dependent  upon  his 
activity  and  thus  appropriated  to  his  children's  service, 
becomes  part  and  parcel  of  the  home,  of  the  goods, 
of  the  children  ;  becomes  appropriated  to  the  nursing, 
the  cooking,  the  clothing,  the  keeping  in  repair ; 
becomes,  thus  amalgamated  with  the  man's  property, 
a  piece  of  property  herself,  body  and  soul,  a  slave 
(often  originally  a  captive,  stolen  or  bought),  and  what 
every  slave  naturally  is,  a  chattel.  By  this  process, 
therefore,  we  have  obtained  a  primitive  human  group, 
differing  most  essentially  from  the  group  composed 
by  the  male  and  female  of  other  genera  :  the  man  and 
the  woman,  vir  ac  femina,  do  not  stand  opposite  one 
another,  he  a  little  taller,  she  a  little  rounder,  like 
Adam  and  Eve  on  the  panels  of  Memling  or  Kranach  ; 
but  in  a  quite  asymmetrical  relation  :  a  big  man,  as  in 
certain  archaic  statues,  holding  in  his  hand  a  little 
woman  ;  a  god  (if  we  are  poetical,  and  if  we  face  the 
advantages  of  the  case)  protecting  a  human  creature  ; 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     271 

or  (if  we  are  cynical,  and  look  to  the  disadvantages) 
a  human  being  playing  with  a  doll. 


Ill 


In  his  remarkable  book,  "  Division  du  Travail 
Social"  M.  Emile  Durkheim  writes  as  follows  : 

"  The  female  of  those  remotest  ages  was  by  no 
means  the  feeble  being  that  she  has  gradually  become 
as  a  result  of  increasing  morality.  Prehistoric  bones 
make  it  quite  plain  to  us  that,  in  those  earliest  times, 
there  was  much  less  difference  of  strength  than  we  find 
nowadays  between  the  two  sexes.  And  even  now,  we 
find  that  during  childhood  the  skeletons  of  the  male 
and  female  present  but  little  difference  ;  the  character- 
istics being,  on  the  whole,  rather  feminine.  If,  there- 
fore, we  admit  that  the  growth  of  the  individual 
reproduces,  so  to  speak,  on  a  small  scale,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  species,  then  we  may  fairly  conjecture  that 
the  same  similarity  between  the  sexes  existed  at  the 
beginning  of  human  evolution,  and  we  may  regard  the 
feminine  form  as  an  approximation  to  that  original 
single  type  of  humanity,  from  which  the  masculine 
variety  has  gradually  become  differentiated.1 

1  Readers  who  wish  to  find  this  question  of  the  original  pre- 
dominance of  the  female  discussed  with  more  liberality  of  view 
than  in  the  above  quotation,  should  read  (and  for  other  reasons 
also)  Mr.  Lester  Ward's  extremely  suggestive  volume  on  "  Pure 
Sociology."  For  the  biological  facts  and  theories  consult  Geddes 
and  Thomson,  "The  Evolution  of  Sex."  Neither  of  these  books 
has  any  practical  bias. 


272    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

"  As  regards  the  highest  organ  of  physical  and 
psychical  life,  it  has  been  shown  by  Dr.  Lebon,  with 
mathematical  precision,  that  the  brain  of  both  sexes 
must  have  originally  presented  just  such  a  degree  of 
similarity.  The  comparison  of  a  large  number  of 
skulls,  selected  among  the  most  different  races  and 
civilisations,  has  led  him  to  the  following  conclusion  : 
that,  if  we  compare  individuals  of  the  same  age,  of  the 
same  stature  and  weight,  the  brain  of  the  male  will  be 
found  considerably  bulkier  than  that  of  the  female  ; 
and  that  this  inequality  increases  regularly  with  the 
increase  of  civilisation  ;  in  such  a  way  that  the  brain 
and,  therefore,  the  mind  of  the  woman  is  constantly 
tending  to  differ,  to  her  disadvantage,  from  the  brain 
and  the  mind  of  the  man.  For  instance,  the  difference 
found  to  exist  between  the  average  skulls  of  modern 
Parisians  of  the  two  sexes  is  almost  double  the  differ- 
ence which  exists  between  the  male  and  female  skulls 
of  the  ancient  Egyptians.  A  German  anthropologist, 
Bischoff,  has  come  to  the  same  conclusions  on  this 
subject  as  Dr.  Lebon.  This  anatomical  resemblance  is 
accompanied  by  similarity  of  function.  For,  in  those 
early  civilisations,  the  feminine  functions  are  not 
sharply  marked  off  from  the  masculine  ones  ;  on  the 
contrary,  the  two  sexes  lead  very  much  the  same  life. 
There  are  even  nowadays  a  considerable  number  of 
savage  races  where  the  woman  takes  her  share  in 
political  life.  This  has  been  remarked  more  especially 
among  the  American  Indians,  like  the  Iroquois  and 
Natchez  ;  also  at  Hawaii,  where  the  female  shares  the 
life  of  the  men  in  a  hundred  ways ;  also  in  New 
Zealand  and  Samoa.  Similarly,  it  is  not  rare  to  find 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     273 

the  women  accompanying  their  men  on  warlike  expedi- 
tions, urging  them  on  in  the  fray  and  even  taking  an 
active  part  in  it.     In  Cuba  and  in  Dahomey  also  they 
are   as  warlike  as  the  men,   and    fight    by  their  side. 
.  .  .  Now,  it  is  to  be  observed  that,  among  all  these 
peoples,    the     institution    of    marriage     is    extremely 
rudimentary.   .   .   .  We  are  acquainted  with  a  type  of 
family,    comparatively    near    us    in    time,    and    which 
possesses  only  a  germ,  so  to  speak,  of  marriage  :  we 
allude  to  the  maternal  family.  ...  In  this,  marriage, 
or  what  goes  by  the  name  of  marriage,  consists  in  but 
few    obligations,   frequently  limited    also   in  duration, 
which  bind  the  husband  to  the  wife's  relations.   .  .  . 
Whereas,  the  further  we  advance,  and  the  nearer  we 
draw   to    modern    times,    the   more    also    do   we   see 
marriage  take  on  in  complexity.  .  .  .  And  it  is  certain 
that,  at  the  same  time,  we  find  a  greater  and  greater 
division  of  labour  as  between  the  two  sexes.  .  .  .  For 
ages    past   woman    has    withdrawn   from   warfare   and 
public    business    and    concentrated    all    her    activities 
within  the  limits  of  the  individual  family.     And  the 
part  which  she  plays  has  become  only  more  and  more 
specialised  ;    so  that   nowadays,    and    among   civilised 
nations,  the  female  leads  a  life  absolutely  different  from 
that  of  the  male.     It  is  as  if  the  two  great  halves  of 
the  soul's  life  had  become  severed,  and  as  if  one  of  the 
two  sexes  had  appropriated  the  emotional  functions  and 
the  other  the  functions  of  the  intellect." 

I  am  very  glad  to  have  been  able  to  furnish  my 
reader,  instead  of  a  precis  of  parts  of  "  Women  and 
Economics,"  the  above  quotation  on  the  subject  of  that 
equality  of  faculties  and  community  of  functions  which 

18 


274    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

may  (or  may  not)  have  originally  existed  between  the 
two  halves  of  genus  homo,  and  upon  that  subsequent 
differentiation  which  resulted  in  what  M.  Durkheim 
has  aptly  and  joyfully  defined  as  a  "  stationary  or  even 
retrograde  tendency"  in  the  female  skull.  For,  to  such 
readers  as  have  reason  (perhaps  owing  to  their  superior 
knowledge)  for  giving  much  weight  to  similar  state- 
ments about  prehistoric  civilisations ;  and  to  such 
readers  also  as  feel  that  the  fact  of  having  possessed 
any  particular  desideratum  in  the  past  constitutes  a 
better  claim  to  its  possession  in  the  future,  to  both 
these  classes  of  readers,  it  must  be  much  more  satis- 
factory to  be  assured  of  the  original  and  primaeval 
importance  of  womankind  by  M.  Durkheim,  who 
jubilates  at  the  "  stationnement  et  regression  des  cranes 
ftminins "  as  a  splendid  argument  in  favour  of 
thorough-going  division  of  labour,  than  to  take  it  on 
the  authority  of  Mrs.  Stetson  herself,  who,  of  course, 
may  be  suspected  of  partiality  for  any  hypotheses 
redounding  to  the  glory  of  our  earliest  mothers. 

I  am  also  glad  to  have  devolved,  so  to  speak,  the 
onusprobandi  of  the  original  equality  of  male  and  female 
skulls,  of  the  primitive  similarity  of  habits,  functions, 
and  powers  of  the  two  sexes,  and  particularly  the 
responsibility  for  that  uncertain  spectre,  the  "  Matri- 
arch," on  to  an  adversary  of  female  emancipation  ; 
because  I  suspect  that,  in  the  undeveloped  state  of 
anthropology  and  prehistoric  sociology,  the  alleged 
facts  and  cherished  hypotheses  of  one  day  are  sure  to  be 
upset  the  next.  And  also  because  I  have  a  very  strong 
feeling  that  the  desirability  of  any  particular  thing  in 
the  future  has  nothing  to  do  with  its  existence  or  non- 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     275 

existence  in  the  past ;  and  that  the  question  of  the 
position  of  women,  say,  in  the  year  2000  A.D.,  will 
depend  not  upon  the  position  of  women  in  the  year — 
well,  the  year  20,000  before  the  Deluge — but  upon  the 
condition  of  the  world  at  large,  the  intellectual,  moral, 
particularly  economical  state  of  men  and  women,  in 
our  own  times.  For  to  a  believer  in  the  principle 
of  evolution,  the  nature,  the  fate,  of  an  organ,  a 
faculty,  an  institution,  an  art,  a  class  or  a  sex,  are  a 
matter  of  adaptation  to  the  condition  of  everything 
else  which  can  affect  it ;  the  specialisation — even  that 
"  division  of  labour "  which  M.  Durkheim  places 
(instead  of  poor  old  happiness,  long  since  dethroned) 
as  the  aim  of  all  human  effort — the  social  organisation 
we  are  all  so  proud  of  (marriage  laws,  private  property, 
inheritance,  army,  bureaucracy,  public  instruction), 
have  had,  after  all,  exceedingly  humble  origins.  Man 
himself — I  will  not  say  Homo  Himself  or  Herself — has 
developed  out  of  some  very  simple  bit  of  slime ;  so  why 
should  the  woman  of  the  future  require  to  prove  so 
many  quarterings,  to  demonstrate  that  she  is  of  decayed 
nobility,  to  point  to  genealogical  trees  with  a  Matriarch 
at  their  root  ? 


IV 


Thus,  in  my  opinion,  Mrs.  Stetson's  truly  valuable 
achievement  consists  in  showing  that  the  exclusion  of 
women  from  the  world's  activity  and  their  subordina- 
tion to  men,  have  ceased  to  be  either  beneficial  or 
inevitable,  however  beneficial  and  inevitable  they  may 
have  been  towards  securing  the  lengthened  infancy  and 


276    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

greater  educability  of  human  beings,  and  also  the 
storage  and  increase  of  inventions  and  laws,  thanks  to 
a  rigidly  organised  home.  Mrs.  Stetson  has  satis- 
factorily demonstrated  (to  me  at  least)  that  one 
particular  automatic  arrangement  of  social  evolution 
has  done  its  work :  like  slavery,  like  serfage,  like 
feudalism,  like  monasticism,  like  centralisation  (accord- 
ing to  individualists),  like  capitalism  (according  to 
socialists),  the  subordination  of  women  has  served  its 
purpose  and  now  become  an  impediment  to  progress  ; 
an  impediment  which  progress  is  therefore  bound 
to  sweep  away.  The  childhood,  the  greater  teach- 
ableness of  genus  homo  can  now  no  longer  be  en- 
dangered ;  and  a  large  proportion  of  human  education 
has,  since  thousands  of  years,  passed  from  the  care  of 
the  mother  to  that  of  the  community  as  a  whole,  or  of 
portions — guilds,  priesthoods,  universities,  and  so  forth 
— of  the  community  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
inventions  and  traditions  have  been  stored,  multiplied, 
and  diffused  far  beyond  the  powers  of  family  education. 
Civilisation  is  being  impoverished  by  the  paying  off  of 
a  debt.  It  is  time  that  debt  should  be  cancelled. 
The  benefit  has  long  been  secured  beyond  all  possi- 
bility of  loss  ;  but  the  price  is  still  being  paid.  Now 
what  is  this  price  ?  M.  Durkheim  and  the  sociologists 
of  whom  he  is  typical,  have  answered  with  complacent 
simplicity  :  "  The  stagnation  and  regression  of  the 
Female  Mind."  Less  easily  pleased  than  these  learned 
theorists,  Mrs.  Stetson  has  set  about  analysing  the 
facts  covered  by  their  satisfactory  little  sentence,  and 
demonstrating  in  detail  what  the  "  Stagnation  and 
Regression  of  the  Female  Mind  "  implies.  She  has 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     277 

shown  that  it  means  the  removal  of  womankind  from 
the  field  of  action  and  reaction  called  the  universe  at 
large  to  the  field  of  action  and  reaction  called  "  the 
family  circle  "  ;  the  substitution,  as  a  factor  of  adapta- 
tion and  selection,  of  the  preference  of  the  husband 
or  possible  husband  for  the  preferences,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  whole  of  creation.  In  other  words,  the 
sequestration  of  the  capacities  of  one  half  of  the  human 
race,  and  their  enclosure  inside  the  habits  and  powers 
of  the  other  half  of  the  human  race.  Briefly,  a  condi- 
tion in  which  the  man  plays  the  part  of  the  animal  who 
moves  and  feeds  freely  on  the  earth's  surface  ;  and  the 
woman  the  part  of  the  parasitic  creature  who  lives  inside 
that  animal's  tissues.  The  comparison  is  exact;  but 
we  ought  not  to  push  the  analogy  to  the  point  of  con- 
sidering the  parasitism  of  womankind  as  the  parasitism 
of  a  destructive  microbe.  The  mischief  lies  not  in  the 
fact  of  parasitism  (does  not  M.  Durkheim  assure  us 
that  all  co-operation  is  a  form  of  parasitism,  and  the 
co-operation  of  the  woman  absolutely  requires  her 
parasitism  ?),  but  in  the  fact  that  this  parasitic  life  has 
developed  in  the  parasite  one  set  of  faculties  and 
atrophied  another  ;  atrophied  the  faculties  which  the 
woman  had  (or  might  have  had,  even  if  in  lesser 
degree)  in  common  with  the  man,  and  developed  those 
which  were  due  to  the  fact  of  her  being  a  woman. 

Philosophers  and  others  of  M.  Durkheim's  way  of 
thinking  will  here  interrupt  in  favour  of  those 
qualities  thus  developed  ;  and  insist  that  the  dis- 
tinctively feminine  peculiarities  are  not  a  drawback, 
but  a  blessing.  Of  course  some  are.  But  even  if  we 
admit  that  chastity,  maternal  unselfishness,  tender- 


278    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

ness,  gentleness,  are  due  to  woman's  dependent  position 
(a  theory  invalidated  by  the  coyness  in  courtship 
and  the  passion  for  their  young  of  she-animals,  who  are 
anything  but  dependent  on  their  males),  and  if  we  add 
to  these  solid  perfections,  aesthetic  graces  which  the 
aesthetic  Greeks  by  no  means  viewed  as  especially 
feminine  ;  even  if  we  grant  for  argument's  sake  that 
all  the  good  in  women  is  due  to  their  parasitic  status, 
this  gain  must  be  added  to  the  main  advantage  resulting 
from  "  feminine  stagnation  and  regression,"  namely, 
the  prolongation  of  childhood  and  the  establishment 
of  the  family  group,  not  deducted  from  the  price  at 
which  it  has  been  bought.  And  similarly,  we  must  not 
let  our  Durkheim  friends  and  adversaries  argue  as  if 
these  virtues  would  vanish  off  the  earth  if  the  position 
of  women  were  changed.  For,  whatever  their  origin, 
they  have  become  sufficiently  common  to  both  sexes 
for  Buddhism  and  Christianity  to  have  made  chastity, 
mansuetude  and  unselfishness  the  basis  of  their  ethical 
system,  which  means  that  even  if  women  were  to 
become  spiritual  facsimiles  of  men,  they  would  still  be 
exhorted  to  practise  these  virtues,  or  else  that  these 
virtues  (as  Nietzsche  contends)  are  by  no  means  so 
essential  as  M.  Durkheim  and  other  respectable 
sociologists  take  for  granted.  As  it  happens,  Mrs. 
Stetson  and  I  think  that  Buddha  and  Christ  are  nearer 
the  truth  in  this  matter  than  Nietzsche.  But  the 
qualities  whose  over-development  in  women  is  the  evil 
result  of  "  stagnation  and  regression  "  are  not  com- 
mended by  either  Buddha  or  Christ  or  Nietzsche, 
and  cannot,  without  much  strain,  be  considered  as 
virtues  by  any  one.  They  are,  at  least  in  their  un- 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     279 

desirable  preponderance,  a  part  of  the  heavy  price 
which  all  the  above-named  virtues  and  desiderata  have 
cost  humanity  in  the  past,  a  price  which,  in  our 
opinion,  humanity  may  as  well  stop  paying  in  the 
future.  Having,  as  I  trust,  made  this  point  sufficiently 
clear,  we  may  return  to  Mrs.  Stetson's  analysis  of  that 
price,  and  inquire  what  has  the  race  lost  through 
feminine  regression  and  stagnation,  however  indispens- 
able this  neat  pair  of  abstractions  may  have  proved 
in  their  day. 

The  first  answer  which  arises  in  the  mind  is  naturally 
a  direct  one  :  the  work  which  womankind  might  have 
accomplished  during  those  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
years  -tf  she  had  not  had  a  man  to  work  for  her ;  the 
work  which  might  have  been  given  by  two  halves  of 
the  human  race,  instead  of  being  given  by  one  only. 
But  here  again  we  have  need  for  a  distinguo,  though 
not  a  casuistic  one.  The  woman  did  do  work  through- 
out that  time.  Not  merely  the  essential  work,  direct 
and  indirect,  of  rearing  a  new  generation  and,  in  a 
measure,  keeping  up  the  acquired  standard  of  civilisa- 
tion ;  but  also  the  work,  less  essential  indeed  to  the 
race,  which  enabled  the  man  not  merely  to  seek  for 
food  away  from  the  home,  but  also  to  be  as  idle  as  he 
required  (or  at  least  as  he  liked)  while  in  it.  The 
woman,  save  among  the  exceptionally  wealthy,  has 
always  been  the  chief  domestic  servant ;  and  even 
nowadays  she  is  so,  to  a  greater  or  lesser  extent.  The 
woman,  therefore,  has  worked  ;  but — and  here  comes 
the  subtle  distinction  on  which  the  whole  economic 
and  sociological  part  of  the  subject  reposes — she  has 
worked  not  for  the  consumption  of  the  world  at  large, 


and  subject  to  the  world's  selection  of  good  or  bad, 
useful  or  useless,  work  ;  but  for  the  consumption  of 
one  man  and  subject  to  that  one  man's  preferences. 
The  woman  has  worked  without  thereby  developing 
those  qualities  which  competition  has  developed  among 
male  workers.  She  has  not  become  as  efficient  a  human 
being  as  her  brothers ;  whatever  her  individual  in- 
herited aptitudes  (and,  as  Mrs.  Stetson  aptly  reminds 
us,  women  are,  after  all,  the  children  of  men  as  well 
as  of  women,  and  must,  therefore,  inherit  some  of 
their  father's  natural  powers),  she  has  not  been  allowed 
to  develop  them  in  the  struggle  for  life  ;  but  has  been 
condemned,  on  the  contrary,  to  atrophy  them  in  forms 
of  labour  which  can  require  only  the  most  common 
gifts,  since  they  are  required  equally  of  every  woman 
in  every  family.  Let  us  repeat  this  fact  :  womankind 
has  not  acquired  that  degree  of  bodily,  mental,  and 
aesthetic  efficiency  which  can  result  only  from  the 
competition  of  such  qualities,  and  from  that  professional 
education  which  is  itself  a  result  of  competition.  This, 
please  observe,  is  not  the  view  only  of  Mrs.  Stetson 
and  the  persons  in  favour  of  female  emancipation. 
M.  Durkheim's  famous  "  stagnation  and  regression " 
of  the  female  mind  can  mean  only  that  women  have 
become  a  great  deal  less  competent  than  they  either 
originally  were,  or  than  the  favouring  power  of  natural 
selection  would  have  made  them. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  the  whole  of  the  price  which 
the  human  race  has  had  to  pay  for  the  needful  "  division 
of  labour  "  between  its  two  halves.  Negatively,  the 
position  of  women  has  prevented  their  developing 
certain  of  their  possibilities  ;  positively,  it  has  forced 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN    281 

them  to  develop  certain  other  of  their  possibilities. 
It  has  atrophied  the  merely  human  faculties,  which  they 
possess  rudimentarily  in  common  with  men  :  it  has,  on 
the  other  hand,  hypertrophied  the  peculiarity  which 
distinguished  them  from  man  :  hypertrophied  their 
sex.  There  is  one  particular  sentence  in  "  Women 
and  Economics "  which  converted  me  to  the  cause  of 
female  emancipation  :  "  Women  are  over-sexed." 


Women  over-sexed !  Over-sexed !  There  seems 
something  odious  and  almost  intolerable  in  that  word. 
In  the  fact  also — but  odious  and  intolerable  in  a  manner 
more  subtle  and  more  serious  than  mere  scandalised 
modesty  can  ever  understand.  Let  me  try  to  explain 
the  extreme  importance  of  Mrs.  Stetson's  thought. 
Over-sexed  does  not  mean  over-much  addicted  to  sexual 
indulgence  ;  very  far  from  it,  for  that  is  the  case  not 
with  women,  but  with  men,  of  whom  we  do  not  say 
that  they  are  over-sexed.  What  we  mean  by  over-sexed 
is  that,  while  men  are  a  great  many  things  besides 
being  males — soldiers  and  sailors,  tinkers  and  tailors, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  nursery  rhyme — women  are, 
first  and  foremost,  females,  and  then  again  females,  and 
then — still  more  females.  It  is  a  case  for  paraphrasing 
Danton  ;  only  that,  alas  !  there  is  a  considerable  differ- 
ence between  "  de  faudace^  de  Vaudace  et  encore  de 
Vaudace  "  and  "  de  la  femme,  de  la  femme,  et  encore  de 
la  femme"  which  latter  sums  up  the  outspoken  views 
of  the  Latin  races,  and  the  practice,  alas !  of  the  less 


282     THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

outspoken  but  more  practical  Teutonic  ones.  And 
here  we  touch  the  full  mischief.  That  women  are 
over-sexed  means  that,  instead  of  depending  upon  their 
intelligence,  their  strength,  endurance,  and  honesty, 
they  depend  mainly  upon  their  sex  ;  that  they  appeal 
to  men,  dominate  men  through  the  fact  of  their  sex  ; 
that  (if  the  foregoing  seems  an  exaggeration)  they  are 
economically  supported  by  men  because  they  are  wanted 
as  wives  and  mothers  of  children — that  is  to  say, 
wanted  for  their  sex.  And  it  means,  therefore,  by  a 
fearful  irony,  that  the  half  of  humanity  which  is  con- 
stitutionally (and  by  the  bare  fact  of  motherhood) 
more  chaste,  less  dominated  by  sexual  impulses  and 
thoughts,  has  unconsciously,  and  all  the  more  inevit- 
ably, acquired  its  power,  secured  its  livelihood,  by 
making  the  other  half  of  humanity  less  chaste,  by 
appealing  through  every  means,  material,  aesthetic  and 
imaginative,  sensual  or  sentimental,  to  those  already 
excessive  impulses  and  thoughts  of  sex.  The  woman 
has  appealed  to  the  man,  not  as  other  men  appeal  to 
him,  as  a  comrade,  a  competitor,  a  fellow-citizen,  or 
an  open  enemy  of  different  nationality,  creed,  or  class  ; 
but  as  a  possible  wife,  as  a  female. 

This  has  been  a  cause  of  weakness  and  degradation 
to  the  man  ;  a  "  fall,"  like  that  of  Adam  ;  and,  in 
those  countries  where  literature  is  thoroughly  out- 
spoken, man,  like  Adam,  has  thrown  the  blame  on 
Eve,  as  the  instrument  of  the  Devil.  I  am  not  alluding 
to  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  or  to  ascetic  writers ;  but 
to  the  essayists,  novelists,  and  dramatists  who  have 
taken  their  place  in  modern  life,  and  who  have  merely 
restated,  in  language  less  allegorical,  but  by  no  means 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     283 

more  polite,  the  legend,  or  rather,  alas  !  the  sociological 
fact,  of  the  death  and  damnation  of  man's  soul  through 
woman. 

This  is,  of  course,  particularly  the  case  among  our 
Continental  neighbours,  more  outspoken  than  we  upon 
all  sexual  questions,  and  unhampered  by  the  thought 
of  Thackeray's  Erubescent  Young  Person.  The  old, 
old  story  is  repeated  with  slight  variations  from 
Schopenhauer  to  Nietzsche,  and  from  Michelet  to 
Dumas  fils.  I  think  it  may  be  studied  best  in  the 
works  of  this  really  very  humanitarian  though  exceed- 
ingly amusing  dramatist. 

"  Well,  then,"  asks  Mme.  Leverdet  in  his  "  Ami 
des  Femmes,"  "  what  conclusion  have  you  come  to  as 
a  result  of  your  studies  of  womankind  ?  You  needn't 
mind  telling  me,  for  I  am  zfemme  cT  esprit." 

"  My  conclusion,"  answers  De  Ryons,  the  "  Ami  des 
Femmes  " — "  my  conclusion  is  that  Woman,  such  as 
she  exists  at  present,  is  a  creature  entirely  illogical, 
inferior,  and  harmful — '  un  etre  illogique^  subalterne  et 
malfaisant? ' 

The  admirable  preface  of  the  play,  and  the  whole 
tenor  of  the  author's  works,  show  that  the  younger 
Dumas  is  making  use  of  the  personage  of  De  Ryons 
to  speak  his  own  innermost  convictions,  and  that  these 
are  the  convictions  of  a  very  sincere  and  very  dis- 
heartened moralist.  As  such,  they  are  well  worthy  of 
our  attention  ;  and — in  the  light  of  Mrs.  Stetson's 
words,  "  Women  are  over-sexed " — ought  to  carry 
more  weight  than  a  whole  cargo  of  "Woman  Question" 
pamphlets.  In  the  first  place,  Dumas  fils  is  rebelling, 
with  the  mixed  cynicism  and  enthusiasm  of  his  moralist's 


284    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

nature,  against  the  poetical  lie,  covering  so  much  ugly 
prose,  that  "  Love  is  enough."  Rebelling,  that  is  to 
say,  against  the  narrowing  of  that  great  word  love 
down  to  a  single  one  of  its  possible  meanings  ;  rebelling 
against  the  notion  that  the  power  of  loving,  of  giving 
one's  self,  body  and  soul,  which  is  necessary  for  the 
efficacy  and  dignity  of  all  human  labour,  of  all  human 
relationship,  should  be  expended  solely  in  the  passion 
of  a  man  for  a  woman.  He  sees  and  he  preaches  how 
small  a  part  sex  has  a  right  to  play  in  this  big  and 
complex  world,  how  episodic  a  part  in  this  wide  and 
varied  human  life.  And  he  sees  that  the  danger 
and  the  evil  come  from  what  we  have  learned  to  call 
the  over-sexed  woman,  but  which  he  calls,  like  every 
Frenchman,  merely  La  Femme. 

For  he  is  himself  that  Femme 's  first  and  foremost 
victim  ;  he  is  hag-ridden  by  that  fearful  neo-Latin 
abstraction  as  in  an  inevitable  reality.  Similar  in  this 
to  so  very  different  a  man  as  Michelet,  Dumas  de- 
scribes La  Femme  as  if  she  were  a  single  and  invariable 
type,  and,  moreover,  also  the  type  of  a  disease.  It  is 
altogether  impossible  to  translate  into  English  the 
particular  words  which  either  Michelet  or  Dumas 
(I  forget  which)  has  coined  as  expressive  of  the  inti- 
mate nature  of  womankind.  But  in  another  place 
Michelet  defines  the  object  of  his  love  and  pity,  of 
his  very  honest  "  Frauendienst" — as  "  la  femme,  toujours 
faible  et  souvent  furieuse" — while  Dumas  has  a  less 
medical  and  much  more  amusing  formula :  "  Ces 
charmants  et  terribles  petits  carnivores  pour  lesquels 
on  se  deshonore,  on  se  ruine,  on  se  tue,  et  dont  1'unique 
preoccupation,  au  milieu  de  ce  carnage  universel,  est 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     285 

de   s'habiller   tantot   comme   des  parapluies  et  tantot 
comme  des  sonnettes." 

Dumas,  however,  is  not  inferior  to  Michelet  in 
physiological  lore,  particularly  of  the  kind  offered  to 
the  world  by  men  of  science  rather  hungry  than 
scrupulous.  In  this  preface  of  "  L'Ami  des  Femmes," 
we  have  a  list  of  all  the  possible  varieties  of  La  Femme, 
with  inventories  of  her  peculiarities,  from  the  lines  in 
her  hands  to  the  shape  and  consistence  of  her  calves, 
let  alone  the  smoothness  or  crispness  of  hair,  the 
flatness  or  sharpness  of  nose,  the  skin  which  is  either 
always  warm  or  always  cold,  and  those  curious  olfactory 
details  which  prove  that,  so  far  as  French  writers  are 
concerned,  it  is  quite  untrue  that  genus  homo  is  inferior 
to  the  canine  race  in  the  faculty  of  scent.  Physiologic- 
ally and  sociologically,  Dumas  believes  unhesitatingly 
in  the  existence  of  La  Femme.  And  believing  in  her 
as  such,  he  sees  in  her  a  horrible  danger  to  man's  moral 
progress ;  he  sees  her  attack  him,  grapple  with  him, 
destroy  him,  in  her  capacity  not  of  human  being,  of 
competitor,  of  enemy,  but  in  her  capacity  of  woman, 
of  mistress  or  wife.  Against  this  danger  man  must 
eternally  struggle  ;  the  creature  made  in  God's  image 
must  be  saved  from  this  diseased  piece  of  its  own 
flesh.  Man  must  diminish  the  power  of  woman  by 
diminishing  his  own  sensuality  and  folly.  One  feels 
all  through  this  laughing  cynicism  a  sort  of  priestly 
rage  at  the  impossibility  of  finding  out  some  better 
mode  of  continuing  the  race,  at  the  impossibility  of 
thoroughly  getting  rid  of  this  constant  disgrace  and 
danger. 

Meanwhile,  there  women  are,  and  the  only  thing  is 


286    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

to  be  exceedingly  wise  and  consistent  and  austere  with 
them  ;  not  to  be  unjust  or  angry  with  their  miserable 
nature,  which  is  not  any  fault  of  theirs.  Besides,  and 
that  is  the  worst  of  it,  these  sirens,  these  man-destroy- 
ing monsters,  do  everything  to  make  themselves 
agreeable  ;  these  dangerous  wild  beasts  are,  alas ! 
charming. 


VI 


All  this  is,  you  will  answer,  mere  literary  exaggera- 
tion. There  have  been  an  enormous  number  of  most 
useful  women  in  the  world,  Mrs.  Fry,  Queen  Elizabeth, 
Joan  of  Arc,  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi ;  and,  as  a 
fact,  it  is  these  selfsame  Latin  countries,  with  all  their 
filthy  talk  about  La  Femme,  her  ailments  and  powers, 
who  bore  us  Anglo-Saxons  almost  equally  with  their 
talk  about  the  miraculous  virtues  of  La  Mere,  who  is, 
after  all,  only  La  Femme  .  .  .  well,  as  the  Latins 
would  put  it,  when  she  is  too  old  or  too  busy  to  be 
La  Femme. 

Doubtless.  And  it  is  not  "  Women  and  Economics," 
nor  I,  its  converted  expounder,  who  give  so  inordinate 
an  importance  to  the  influence  of  the  over-sexed  woman 
upon  the  moral  cleanness,  the  chastity,  of  mankind  ;  it 
is  the  very  people,  like  Dumas,  who  believe,  which  we 
do  not,  in  the  universal  existence  and  eternal  duration 
of  La  Femme. 

Mrs.  Stetson  has  mentioned  this  aspect  of  the  ques- 
tion, and  I  have  followed  her  example,  because  it  is 
certainly  an  important  one.  But  Mrs.  Stetson  has 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     287 

taught  me  to  see  that  there  is  another  aspect,  more 
important  by  far.  The  fostering  of  vices,  especially 
of  vices  so  harmful  to  the  race  as  those  presided  over 
by  La  Femme,  is  a  very  grave  mischief ;  but  vices,  from 
their  vicious  nature,  are  more  or  less  exceptional  and 
tend  to  die  out.  And  a  far  more  serious  evil  consists  in 
the  wasting  and  perverting  of  virtues,  the  systematic 
misapplication  of  healthy  feelings  and  energies.  Now 
the  chief  point  made  by  the  author  of  "  Women  and 
Economics,"  the  point  which,  as  it  converted  myself, 
ought  to  convert  many  others  from  indifference  to  the 
Woman  Question,  is  concerned  with  the  misapplication 
and  waste  of  the  productive  energies  and  generous 
impulses  of  men,  thanks  to  the  necessity  of  providing 
not  only  for  themselves  and  their  offspring,  but  for  a 
woman  who  has  been  brought  up  not  as  a  citizen,  but 
as  a  parasite,  not  as  a  comrade,  but  as  a  servant,  or — 
well,  consider  the  word  even  in  its  most  sentimental 
and  honourable  sense — as  a  lover.  The  economic 
dependence  of  women  (however  inevitable  and  useful 
in  the  past)  has  not  merely  limited  the  amount  of 
productive  bodily  and  mental  work  at  the  disposal 
of  the  community,  but  it  has  very  seriously  increased 
the  mal-distribution  of  that  work  and  of  its  products 
by  creating,  within  the  community,  a  system  of  units 
of  virtuous  egoism,  a  network  of  virtuous  rapacity 
which  has  made  the  supposed  organic  social  whole  a 
mere  gigantic  delusion.  Virtuous  egoism,  and  virtuous 
rapacity  ;  for  /'/  is  virtuous  on  the  man's  part,  husband 
or  intending  husband,  to  sacrifice  himself  for  another 
human  being  ;  and  the  consciousness  of  the  virtue 
enables  the  sacrifice  to  be  extended,  with  a  clear  con- 


288    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

science,  to  the  interests  of  the  community  at  large.  A 
man  has  to  be  first  a  good  father  and  husband,  and 
only  afterwards,  with  such  honesty  as  remains  over,  a 
good  citizen. 

"  Such  honesty  as  remains  over  !  Sacrifice  of  the 
community  to  the  wife  and  children  !  "  you  exclaim. 
u  Why,  this  accusation  of  yours  against  the  modern 
man  and  the  modern  woman  is  far  more  really  dreadful 
than  any  of  that  French  rubbish  about  La  Femme  and 
her  victims  !  "  Exactly  so  ;  and  a  great  deal  more 
important,  because  it  is  a  great  deal  truer  and  more 
sweeping.  The  very  fact  of  its  truth  not  being  recog- 
nised merely  goes  to  prove  how  extraordinarily  our 
moral  sense  in  economic  matters  has  been  perverted 
(or  has  failed  to  grow),  owing  to  the  fact  of  the  man 
having  to  supply  the  material  wants  and  satisfy  the 
caprices  not  only  of  himself,  but  of  that  "  better  "  —or 
worse — self  who  sees  the  world  only  through  his  eyes, 
and  damages  the  world  only  through  his  hands.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  cheating  or  robbing.  I  am  not  a 
collectivist ;  I  believe  no  more  in  the  rights  of  labour 
than  in  the  rights  of  property  ;  and  I  have  no  reason 
for  supposing  that  the  author  of  "  Women  and 
Economics"  does  so  either.  People's  moral  obtuseness 
is,  on  the  contrary,  proved  irrefutably  by  their  always 
connecting  the  idea  of  dishonesty  with  such  narrow  and 
crass  categories  as  cheating  and  robbery — cheating  and 
robbery  which  can  be  practised  only  against  individuals, 
and  on  very  rare  occasions  ;  besides  being  severely, 
perhaps  almost  too  severely,  punished.  What  cannot 
be  punished  (but  is  on  the  contrary  praised  and 
admired,  when  successful)  is  exactly  the  chronic  and 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     289 

all-pervading  preference  of  the  interest  of  the  indi- 
vidual as  against  the  interest  of  the  community,  the 
debasing  of  the  standard  of  work  and  the  quality  of 
products.  Now,  this  kind  of  dishonesty  triumphs  not 
merely  in  commerce  and  industry  (perhaps  almost  least 
there,  where  most  visible),  but  in  all  the  professions 
which  are  exercised,  and  in  many  cases  (bureaucracies 
of  all  kinds,  civil  and  ecclesiastic,  and  who  shall  say 
how  large  a  portion  of  pur  supposed  necessary  military 
system  ?)  are  kept  in  useless  existence  merely  because 
men  have  to  make  a  living.  "  Je  nen  vois  pas  la 
necessite  "  :  the  minister  might  make  that  simple  answer 
to  the  unmarried  parasite,  office-seeker,  or  journalist, 
or  whatever  he  was  ;  but  no  minister,  however  cynical, 
would  dare  to  question  the  married  man's  right — nay, 
his  duty — to  support  his  wife  and  family,  or,  more 
strictly,  his  wife. 

I  repeat  :  more  strictly  his  wife ;  because  it  is,  in 
reality,  not  the  unborn  children,  or  even  the  born 
children,  who  decide  the  "  standard  of  living  "  ;  but 
the  wife,  extremely  on  the  spot,  and  already  accustomed 
both  to  a  certain  degree  of  expenditure  as  a  reality, 
and,  what  is  quite  as  important,  to  a  certain  expendi- 
ture as  an  ideal  in  the  future.  Even  the  poorest 
paupers  contrive  to  rear  offspring  ;  and,  by  a 
melancholy  irony,  the  greater  part  of  the  world's  most 
necessary  work  happens  to  be  done  by  people  "  whose 
dear  papa  was  poor,"  as  Stevenson  makes  the  good 
little  boy  express  it.  No,  no,  it  is  not  the  children 
who  ask  for  carriage  horses,  toilettes,  and  footmen,  or 
(in  more  sordid  spheres)  for  the  Ibsenian  "  home  for 
happy  people,"  with  its  one  overworked  drudge  and 

19 


29o    THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

its  preoccupation  about  the  husband's  dinner.  It  is 
not  even  the  children  who  clamour  for  nurse-maids 
and  governesses  and  expensive  schools :  it  is  the 
wife. 


VII 


"  Tout  cela  a  ete  fait  pour  casser"  remarks  Nana, 
after  one  of  her  bouts  of  destruction.  Reputable 
women  do  not,  usually,  while  away  a  dull  morning  like 
Zola's  ingenuous  courtesan  ;  they  do  not  set  to  tearing 
and  smashing.  But  the  only  difference,  very  often,  is 
that  while  the  light  lady  destroyed  in  a  couple  of  hours 
the  product  of  many  men's  and  many  months'  labour, 
the  virtuous  woman  of  the  well-to-do  classes,  and  of 
the  classes  (more  numerous  and  important)  aspiring  or 
pretending  to  such  well-to-do-ness,  alters,  discards, 
throws  away  more  gradually  those  objects  which  are  no 
longer  consonant  with  "  what  one  has  to  have,"  and 
whose  continued  use  would  therefore  suggest  the  horrid 
thought  that  the  family  was  not  really  well-off;  in 
eminently  business  countries  the  thought  that  the 
husband's  business  was  not  thriving.  "It  is  good  for 
trade,"  remark  the  more  responsible  among  these 
ladies,  unconsciously  echoing  a  reflexion  of  that  same 
Nana.  It  is  good  for  trade  :  and  so  is  a  town  being 
burnt  down,  or  swallowed  up  by  an  earthquake,  or 
washed  away  by  a  tidal  wave.  It  makes  room  for 
more  objects  (dresses,  crockery,  furniture,  houses,  or 
human  beings)  ;  but,  meanwhile,  you  have  wasted 
those  that  were  already  there,  and  all  the  labour  and 
capital  they  have  cost  to  produce. 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     291 

But  the  spirit  of  wastefulness  is  by  no  means  the 
worst  co-relative  among  women  of  the  spirit  of 
rapacity,  of  **  getting  wealth,  not  making  it,"  as 
Mrs.  Stetson  luminously  describes  it,  which  the 
economic  dependence  of  the  wife  develops  (as  a  virtue, 
too !)  in  the  husband.  An  enormous  amount  of  the 
hardness  in  bargaining,  the  readiness  to  take  advantage, 
the  willingness  to  use  debasing  methods  (such  as  our 
modern  hypnotising  advertisement  system),  the  whole- 
sale acceptance  of  intellectual  and  moral,  if  not  material, 
adulteration  of  work  and  its  products — corresponds  in 
the  husband  to  what  is  honoured  as  thrift,  as  good  man- 
agement, in  the  wife.  It  is  more  than  probable  that 
the  time  wasted,  the  bad  covetousness  excited,  the  futile 
ingenuity  exercised  by  the  women  who  crowd  round 
the  windows  of  our  great  shops  and  attend  their  odious 
"  sales,"  are  really  the  result  of  a  perverted  possibility 
of  virtue. 

For  the  man's  virtue  is  to  make  money  ;  the  woman's 
virtue  is  to  make  money  go  a  long  way.  And,  between 
the  two  virtues,  we  are  continually  told  that  a  business 
house  cannot  give  better  wages  and  shorter  hours 
because  it  would  be  "  crowded  out  of  the  market "  ; 
and  we  are  told  also,  by  more  solemn  moralists  still, 
that  nations  cannot  do  without  war,  lest  they  lose  their 
"  commercial  outlets,"  or  fail  to  secure  those  they  have 
not  yet  got. 

Who  can  object  ?  All  these  people  are  good 
husbands  and  good  wives  ;  the  home  is  the  pivot  of 
our  morality.  And  the  most  disheartening  thing  is, 
that  all  this  is  true. 


292     THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 


VIII 


How  do  you  propose  to  remedy  it?  By  what  arrange- 
ments do  you  expect  to  make  the  wife  the  economic 
equal  of  her  husband,  the  joint  citizen  of  the 
community  ? 

I  propose  nothing,  because  I  do  not  know.  All  I 
feel  sure  of  is,  that  if  people  only  want  a  change 
sufficiently  strongly  and  persistently,  that  change  will 
work  out  its  means  in  one  way  or  another.  Which 
way  ?  is  a  question  often  unanswerable,  because  the 
practical  detail  depends  upon  other  practical  details 
which  the  continuance  of  the  present  state  of  things  is 
hiding  from  us,  or  even  forbidding.  And  because, 
moreover,  we  are  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  resources 
which  become  available  only  in  connection  with  other 
resources,  and  only  under  the  synthetic  power  of  desire. 
The  lids  of  boiling  kettles  went  on  rising  all  through 
Antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages  ;  but  the  notion  of 
using  that  expansive  movement  of  steam  could  not 
occur  until  people  had  already  got  roads  and  mariners' 
compass  and  mechanical  mills,  and  until  people  were 
beginning  to  find  stage-coaches  and  sailing  vessels  and 
wind-mills  and  water-mills  a  little  unsatisfactory.  The 
integration  of  women  as  direct  economic,  and  therefore 
direct  moral  and  civic,  factors  in  the  community,  is  not 
a  more  difficult  question  than  the  question  of  the 
integration  of  the  labouring  classes  into  the  real  life  of 
nations ;  and  yet  the  "  social  question  "  will  find,  some 
day,  its  unexpected  solution  ;  and  the  "  Woman 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     293 

Question  "  will,  very  likely,  have  to  be  settled  before 
that. 

Have  to  be  settled  ?  I  would  have  said  "  settle 
itself,"  for  that  is  more  like  my  meaning,  if  it  were  not 
that  I  wish  to  insist  that  questions  do  not  settle  them- 
selves satisfactorily,  unless  we  wish  and  help  them  to 
do  so.  It  is  for  the  sake  of  such  increase  of  wish  for 
a  change  in  the  economic  position  of  women,  or,  at 
all  events,  a  diminution  of  the  present  very  strong 
prejudice  against  such  a  change,  that  the  discussion  of 
ways  and  means  appears,  to  me  at  least,  principally 
useful.  I  do  not  agree  with  Mrs.  Stetson's  suggestion 
of  our  eventually  living  in  a  kind  of  hotel,  or  at  least 
dining  permanently  in  a  restaurant ;  but  the  discussion 
of  such  a  plan,  odious  as  it  appears  to  me,  is  infinitely 
useful  in  accustoming  us  to  the  thought  that  some 
arrangement  will  require  to  be  devised  for  delivering 
women  from  the  necessities  of  housekeeping.  I  see 
some  similar  usefulness  even  in  discussions  about  the 
future  of  women  (including  the  possibility  of  that 
famous  "  third  sex "  which  haunts  the  imagination 
of  the  Latin  believers  in  La  Femme\  such  as  I.  H. 
Rosny  has  introduced  (I  scarcely  know  whether  as  a 
joke  or  not)  into  his  "  Chemin  d'Amour."  All  these 
speculations,  serious  or  frivolous,  enthusiastic  or 
cynical,  serve  to  plough  up  the  solid,  sterile  ground 
of  our  prejudices,  and  to  expose  our  thoughts  and 
feelings  to  the  fertilising  influences  of  time  and 
chance. 

Besides  this  fact,  the  one  thing  certain  about  the 
future  of  women  is,  surely,  that  they  ought  to  be  given, 
by  the  removal  of  legal  and  professional  disabilities,  a 


294     THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

chance,  if  not  of  becoming  different  from  what  they 
have  been,  at  all  events  of  showing  what  they  really 
are.  For  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  this  most  paradoxi- 
cal question  is  precisely  that,  with  all  our  literature 
about  La  Femme,  and  all  our  violent  discussions, 
economical,  physiological,  psychological,  sociological 
(each  deciding  according  to  some  hypothesis  of  his 
immature  science),  as  to  what  women  must  or  must  not 
be  allowed  to  do,  and  what  women  must  and  must  not 
succeed  or  fail  in — we  do  not  really  know  what  women 
are.  Women,  so  to  speak,  as  a  natural  product,  as 
distinguished  from  women  as  a  creation  of  men  ;  for 
women,  hitherto,  have  been  as  much  a  creation  of  men 
as  the  grafted  fruit  tree,  the  milch  cow,  or  the  gelding 
who  spends  six  hours  in  pulling  a  carriage,  and  the  rest 
of  the  twenty-four  standing  in  a  stable.  Very  excellent 
things,  no  doubt,  and  a  great  deal  more  useful  and 
agreeable  to  man  than  a  bitter-berried  thorn,  or  a 
she-buffalo,  or  a  wild  horse  of  the  pampas ;  but 
scarcely  allowing  us  to  judge,  by  what  they  at 
present  are,  of  what  their  species  must  eternally  and 
necessarily  be. 

One  of  the  very  great  uses  of  Mrs.  Stetson's  most 
useful  book  is  to  accustom  those  who  can  think,  to 
think  in  terms  of  change,  of  adaptation,  of  evolution  ; 
to  free  us  from  the  superstition  that  the  present  is  the 
type  of  the  eternal,  and  that  our  preferences  of  to-day 
are  what  decide  the  fate  of  the  universe.  Woman — 
even  letting  alone  La  Femme — is,  so  to  speak,  the 
last  scientific  survival  of  the  pre-Darwinian  belief 
in  the  invariability  of  types ;  Woman^  I  may  add, 
is  almost  a  relic  of  the  philosophy  of  the  Middle 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     295 

Ages  ;  for  has  not  Woman  an  Essence,  something 
quite  apart  from  herself,  an  essence  like  the  "  virtus 
dormitiva  "  of  opium  (not  always  so  tranquil- 
lising),  an  essential  quality  of  being — well — being  a 
woman  ? 

One  word  more.  There  is  a  notion,  founded  in  the 
main  on  the  facts  of  a  period  of  struggle,  segrega- 
tion of  interests,  and  general  uncomfortable  transition, 
that  if  women  attain  legal  and  economic  independence, 
if  they  get  to  live,  bodily  and  intellectually  and  socially, 
a  life  more  similar,  I  might  say  more  symmetrical,  to 
that  of  men,  they  will  necessarily  become — let  us  put  it 
plainly,  less  attractive  to  possible  husbands.  Of  course, 
if  they  have  changed,  they  will  no  longer  realise  the 
ideal  of  gracefulness,  beauty,  and  lovableness  of  the 
particular  men  who  like  them  just  as  they  are ;  but 
then  those  particular  men  will  themselves  probably  no 
longer  exist.  Moreover,  there  is,  undoubtedly,  a 
certain  co-relation  between  the  qualities  of  the  two 
sexes,  due  to  the  fact,  which  we  are  all  of  us  (not  only 
M.  Durkheim  with  his  "  division  of  labour  ")  inclined 
to  forget,  namely,  that  the  woman  is,  after  all,  not 
merely  the  wife  (since  that  noble  word  must  be  put  to 
such  mean  use)  of  the  man,  but  also  his  daughter,  his 
sister,  and  his  companion ;  and  that,  as  such,  he 
requires  her  to  be  not  unlike,  but  like  himself.  There 
is,  if  we  watch  for  it,  a  family  resemblance,  after  all, 
between  the  men  and  women  of  the  same  country.  I 
was  very  much  struck,  while  at  Tangier,  by  the  fact 
that  the  husbands  of  those  veiled  and  painted  Moorish 
women  were  themselves  so  oddly  like  women  in  men's 
clothes,  those  languid  Moors  lolling  in  their  shops, 


296     THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN 

with  black  beards  which  looked  almost  as  if  they  had 
been  gummed  on  to  their  delicate  white  faces  :  the 
ultra-feminine  woman  belonged,  quite  naturally,  to  the 
effeminate  man.  In  a  similar  way,  the  "  masculine  " 
Englishwoman,  fox-hunting,  alp-climbing,  boating,  is 
the  natural  companion  of  the  out-of-door,  athletic, 
sporting,  colonising  Englishman  ;  she  has  been  taught 
by  her  big  brothers  during  their  holidays  "  not  to  be  a 
muff";  she  has  learned  to  be  ashamed  of  the  things 
"  the  boys "  would  be  ashamed  of.  And,  living  as  I 
do  equally  among  Latins  and  Anglo-Saxons,  I  have  got 
to  guess  that,  if  the  Latins  see  a  "  third  sex "  in  a 
portion  of  Anglo-Saxon  womankind,  the  Anglo-Saxons, 
on  the  other  hand,  have  a  vague  but  strong  feeling  that 
a  corresponding  category  might  be  found  among  the 
Latin  males  morally  emasculated  by  belief  in  La  Femme. 
For  if  manly  be  an  adjective  denoting  certain  virtues, 
and  effeminate  an  adjective  denoting  certain  weaknesses, 
you  may  be  sure  that  the  same  civilisation,  the  same 
habits  and  preferences,  will  produce  more  of  the  one 
than  of  the  other  in  all  the  members  of  a  race,  just 
because  they  do  belong  to  the  same  race.  The  man 
makes  the  woman,  and  the  woman  (as  Dumas  and  the 
believers  in  La  Femme  are  the  first  to  tell  us)  in  her 
turn  makes  the  man  ;  woman  in  the  image  of  man, 
man  in  the  image  of  woman. 

And  since  I  have  used  the  word  image^  and  have 
alluded  to  the  grace  and  beauty,  or  the  gracelessness 
and  ugliness,  of  the  women  of  the  future,  let  me  remind 
Mrs.  Stetson's  readers  that  it  is  just  the  most  aesthetic, 
but  also  the  most  athletic  and  the  most  intellectual, 
people  of  the  past  which  has  left  us  those  statues 


THE  ECONOMIC  PARASITISM  OF  WOMEN     297 

of  gods  and  goddesses  in  the  presence  of  whose 
marvellous  vigour  and  loveliness  we  are  often  in 
doubt  whether  to  give  the  name  of  Apollo,  or  that 
of  Athena. 


RUSKIN    AS   A    REFORMER 


RUSKIN   AS  A   REFORMER 

"...  Through  such  souls  alone 
God,  stooping,  shows  sufficient  of  His  light 
For  us  i'  the  dark  to  rise  by.  ..." 


I 


COMING,  as  it  did,  when  all  England  was  en- 
grossed by  the  tragic  practicalities  of  the  War, 
the  death  of  Ruskin  failed  to  bring  home,  as  the  death 
of  every  great  master  normally  does,  the  full  sense 
of  what  this  man  has  done  and  can  do  for  our  more 
than  momentary  dignity  and  welfare.  The  case 
being  such,  it  is  better  to  come,  as  I  do,  when  others 
have  long  since  had  their  say ;  since  there  is  now 
hope  of  some  attention  from  those  whom  I  would  try 
to  bring  back  to  a  study  of  Ruskin,  by  enumerating 
some  of  the  possibilities  and  habits  of  thought  and 
feeling  which  I  am  myself  aware  of  owing,  at  least 
in  definite  and  imperious  form,  to  the  teachings  of 
this  great  prophet  of  righteous  happiness.  And  the 
attention  I  should  most  desire  is  that  of  the  younger 
of  my  possible  readers  and  those  of  most  advanced 
opinions  ;  because  I  am  convinced  that,  far-spreading 


301 


302  RUSKIN   AS  A  REFORMER 

as  was  his  influence  on  his  immediate  contemporaries, 
and  large  as  is  the  debt  (though  often  second-hand  and 
unacknowledged)  due  to  him  by  the  following  genera- 
tion, the  very  best  of  Ruskin's  efficacy  can  be  expected 
in  the  future  :  an  efficacy  more  limited,  perhaps,  but 
more  genuine  and  fruitful,  unhelped,  but  unmarred 
also,  by  community  of  prejudice  and  error,  and 
founded  solely  and  safely  on  similarity  of  feeling 
and  of  aspiration.  For  the  intuitions  of  Ruskin's 
many-sided  genius  were  recommended  to  the  majority 
of  his  contemporaries — a  majority  larger  than  could 
really  assimilate  them — by  the  system  of  symbolical 
metaphysics  and  dogmatic  morals  in  which  he  set 
them  with  so  tedious  an  ingenuity  ;  but  our  modern 
habits  of  thought  have  reduced  this  artificial  frame- 
work to  little  more  than  a  dreary  litter,  which  wearies 
and  vexes  at  every  step.  It  is,  therefore,  high  time 
to  point  out  the  genuine,  though  unconscious,  organic 
system  which  unifies  all  that  is  living  and  fruitful 
in  Ruskin's  work,  the  vital  synthesis  of  one  of  the 
richest  and  noblest  and  really  best  balanced  of  creative 
personalities. 

More  essentially  than  almost  any  other  illustrious 
writer,  Ruskin  has  been  a  giver  of  great  gifts.  He 
has  opened  out  to  us  many  and  various  fields  of 
aesthetic  and  imaginative  enjoyment,  which  we  can  sum 
up  under  a  number  of  rough  headings — Turner, 
Gothic,  the  Alps,  Venice,  Mediaeval  Painting,  Imagina- 
tive Topography,  certain  Botanical  and  Geological 
Interests,  and  many  of  the  most  essential  and  also 
the  most  recondite  qualities  of  art ;  and  he  has,  with 
the  unerringness  of  unconscious  instinct,  united  them 


RUSKIN   AS  A  REFORMER  303 

all  in  a  scheme  of  living,  nay,  rather  of  feeling  and 
facing  life,  which  is  the  spontaneous  outcome  of  his 
character — the  very  flesh  and  blood  of  his  soul  given 
us  to  partake  of.  Moreover,  this  attitude  towards 
life  (higher  than  Goethe's  or  Carlyle's,  more  complete 
than  Wordsworth's  or  Kenan's,  more  human  than 
Spinoza's  or  Emerson's)  has  the  active,  and  at  the 
same  time  contemplative,  satisfactoriness  of  being  in 
the  widest  sense  religious  ;  how  truly  so  those  best 
can  judge  who  will  strip  away  the  mere  ecclesiastical 
symbolism  and  theological  metaphysics  from  Ruskin's 
genuine  and  spontaneous  thought.  Religious,  in  his 
detachment  from  all  material  possession  or  social 
vanity,  his  capacity  to  take  of  things  only  their  spiri- 
tual use,  their  ideal  fruition  ;  religious,  in  his  desire 
for  union  with  all  creatures  through  gentleness  and 
sharing  ;  religious,  above  all,  in  his  passionate  power 
of  communion  with  all  the  universe  through  love 
and  wonder.  No  writer  has  felt  more  strongly  the 
spiritual  man's  disgust  with  the  narrow  utilitarianism 
(not  Bentham's  nor  Mill's,  truly)  which  looks  upon 
the  world  as  so  much  food  and  fuel,  hides  and  wool ; 
and  no  writer  (not  even  Tolstoi)  has  felt  greater  wrath 
at  the  exploitation  of  human  beings  by  other  human 
beings.  In  the  same  way  that  men  were  sacred  in 
Ruskin's  eyes,  so  also  was  the  visible  and  sensible 
universe) ;  because  he  felt  (expressing  his  feeling  in 
the  formulas  of  God's  works  and  God's  children) 
that  both  the  universe  and  man  should  stand  in 
relationship  of  spirituality  with  the  spiritual  human 
being. 


304  RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER 


II 


This  leads  me  to  begin  what  must  needs  be  a  very 
rough-and-ready  enumeration  of  Ruskin's  many  and 
many-sided  achievements,  by  protesting  against  the 
common  belief,  shared  in  dogmatic  moments  by 
himself,  that  Ruskin  was  unable  to  sympathise  with 
progress  and  was  hostile  to  everything  modern.  His 
early  education  made  him,  indeed,  impervious  to  many 
sides  of  science,  and  he  had  neither  time  nor  disposi- 
tion to  exchange  the  theological  notions  he  had 
received  ready-made  for  any  kind  of  philosophy.  But 
the  progress  which  Ruskin  sneered  at  and  the  modern- 
ness  which  he  anathematised  were,  after  all,  the  very 
same  which  distressed  and  disgusted  so  different  a 
man  as  Renan — progress  which  considered  science 
merely  as  an  instrument  for  commercial  production, 
or,  at  best,  for  sanitary  improvement,  and  modern- 
ness  which  regarded  philosophical  thought  as  a 
useful  solvent  of  inconvenient  spiritualities.  We  must 
remember  that  "  modern "  meant  for  Ruskin,  not 
our  latter-day  habits  of  mind,  already  full  of  sympathy 
with  the  past  and  impatience  of  the  present  and 
tinged  so  deeply  with  reluctance  and  regret,  but  the 
mental  habits,  if  "  mental "  they  might  be  called, 
of  the  second  and  third  quarters  of  the  nineteenth 
century  ;  of  that  period  of  chaotic  materialism,  of 
hand  to  mouth  ruthless  egoism,  against  which  not 
only  Carlyle  came  to  protest,  but  Karl  Marx  also. 
The  wrath  of  Ruskin  forestalled,  despite  exaggeration 
and  dogmatism,  a  way  of  feeling  which  the  scientific 


RUSKIN   AS  A   REFORMER  305 

and  philosophical  development  of  our  day,  nay,  even 
the  increased  habit  of  material  welfare,  will  make 
more  and  more  usual  in  the  future. 

Moreover,  I  would  point  out  that  Ruskin  showed 
equal  abhorrence  for  what  is  the  very  reverse  of 
modern  and  of  progress,  the  brutish  neglect  of  the 
beautiful  work  of  the  past,  the  disrespect  for  Nature's 
fruitfulness  and  cleanness  resulting  from  centuries 
of  sloth  and  barbarism,  such  as  he  saw  it  in  Italy,  in 
France,  and  in  the  Canton  Valais.  The  diseased 
newness  of  Leeds  or  Manchester  and  the  diseased 
decay  of  Venice  or  Verona  affected  him,  equally,  as 
the  desecration  of  the  soul's  sanctuary.  And  the 
deeper  science,  the  wider  practicality,  of  coming  times 
will  justify  the  noble  priestly  wrath  he  experienced. 
But  my  meaning  about  this  will  become  clearer,  and 
Ruskin's  meaning  also,  in  the  course  of  enumerating 
a  few  of  the  interests  he  brought  into  life,  and  then 
of  summing  up  his  attitude  towards  life  as  a  whole. 


Ill 


And  to  begin  with  art. 

The  action  of  Ruskin  has  been  to  break  down 
all  narrow  dilettanteism,  even  of  men  like  Winckle- 
mann  and  Reynolds,  and  show  that  art  was  sprung 
from  daily  life  and  fit  for  daily  life's  consumption. 
Without  ever  belittling  (as  was  the  fashion  in  those 
days  of  Buckle  and  Taine)  that  creative  genius  which 
is  the  flower  of  one  epoch  but  also  the  seed  of  another, 
Ruskin  insisted  on  the  participation  of  the  humblest 

20 


306  RUSKIN   AS  A   REFORMER 

skill  and  sentiment  in  all  the  great  work  of  the  past  ; 
and  indicated  clearly,  even  if  he  did  not  formulate, 
that  masterpieces  owed  the  spontaneous  appreciation 
which  they  got  to  the  existence  of  artistic  forms  and 
qualities  like  their  own  in  the  commonest  household 
objects.  Moreover,  while  teaching  his  reader  to 
take  interest  in  the  constructive  reason  of  all  architec- 
ture, Ruskin  went  far  beyond  considering  this  con- 
structive reason  as  the  essential  of  architectural 
beauty.  The  passages  in  the  "  Seven  Lamps,"  and 
elsewhere,  on  the  evidences  of  living  interest,  of 
seemingly  capricious  but  in  reality  instinctively  mean- 
ingful alteration  of  proportions  and  relations  of  line, 
curve,  mass  and  surface,  forestall  to  my  mind  one 
of  the  most  important  discoveries  which  scientific 
aesthetics  will  have  some  day  to  register. 

And  here  I  would  point  out  that,  in  order  to  get 
Ruskin's  full  meaning,  we  must  never  separate  his 
writings  from  those  wonderful  illustrations  which  tell 
us  all  the  things  words  can  never  say.  It  is  in  them 
that  he  has  given  us  the  real  quality  of  mediaeval 
architecture.  Nay,  more  than  that  ;  he  has  given  us, 
in  his  rendering  of  balcony  and  window  tracery,  of 
the  pine-cone  brickwork  of  steeples,  of  the  feathery 
keenness  of  lance-like  ironwork,  not  merely  the 
aesthetic  loveliness,  but  also  the  imaginative  fascina- 
tion, of  Venice  and  Verona.  Think  how  even  Goethe 
saw  those  towns,  and  how  we  see  them.  Well,  the 
difference  is  due,  two-thirds,  to  Ruskin.  Similarly 
with  the  Alps.  Look  at  his  drawings,  in  "  Modern 
Painters,"  of  the  Mont  Blanc  range.  These  things 
make  one  forevermore  feel  the  uplifting,  the  bud- 


RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER  307 

ding  of  clustered  peaks,  the  sweep  of  moraine  and 
avalanche  tracks,  the  cling  of  forests,  and  add  to  the 
reality  the  charm  of  his  having  seen  and  felt  it. 

Ruskin  gave  us  one  of  our  greatest  pleasures  (gave 
it  consciously  and  as  an  artistic  factor  in  life) — topo- 
graphy ;  teaching  us  to  feel  the  countries  growing, 
forming,  as  we  move  through  them ;  teaching  us  to 
evoke  the  haunting  presence  of  scenery,  on  dreary 
days  or  evenings,  over  maps  ;  the  very  names  of 
stations  growing  delightful,  and  a  talk  about  miles 
and  levels  and  surveyors'  details  becoming  fraught  with 
delight,  a  poem. 

This  art  of  getting  the  imaginative  essence  of  things, 
of  combining  the  mysterious  associations,  subtle, 
microscopic,  between  lovelinesses  of  all  kinds,  between 
all  evidences  of  noble  life,  which  Ruskin  gave  us, 
enabled  him  also  to  point  out  the  real  literary  quality 
which  great  paintings  (Turner's,  for  instance,  in  the 
"  Loire  side "  and  "  St.  Gothard ")  got  by  mere 
selection  of  visible  items.  Nor  must  we  think  of 
Ruskin's  analyses  of  these  pictures  as  mere  ingenious 
exercises  like  those  first  taught  by  Lessing,  which 
distract  the  mind  from  real  artistic  quality.  What 
Ruskin  taught  on  the  largest  scale  and  by  unconscious 
system  was,  not  to  substitute  the  aims  of  one  art 
for  those  of  another,  but  to  unite  in  our  mind  separate 
imaginative  delights,  actual  and  remembered,  and 
to  multiply  them  indefinitely  by  each  other  till  the 
whole  world  became  an  organic  unity,  not  by  mere 
links  of  causality  or  category,  but  by  the  vivifying 
sense  of  love  and  wonder.  Ruskin  felt  all  things 
with  the  energy  and  complexity  due  to  previous 


3o8  RUSKIN   AS  A   REFORMER 

feeling.  The  mere  titles  of  chapters  and  illustrations 
("  Venga  Medusa,"  "  The  Locks  of  Typhon,"  "  The 
Sea  Foundations  ")  show  his  impressions  to  have  been 
like  tones  rich  in  harmonics  which  are  chords  in 
themselves  ;  and  many  of  his  records  of  mere  scientific 
observations  seem  to  be  throbbing  with  imaginative 
pleasure  :  the  record,  for  instance,  of  how  he  calculated 
the  erosion  of  a  certain  mountain,  and  that  delightful 
statement,  one  of  his  most  beautiful  bits  of  writing, 
"the  true  high  cirri ,  never  cross  a  mountain  in  Europe. 
How  often  have  I  hoped  to  see  an  Alp  rising  through 
and  above  their  level-laid  and  rippled  fields." 

This  culminates,  perhaps,  in  the  great  chapter 
of  "  Modern  Painters  "  on  "  The  Use  of  Mountains  "  : 
to  give  motion  to  water,  change  to  air  and  diversity 
to  soil  ;  and  we  may  add,  after  this  chapter,  to  refresh, 
ennoble,  and  enlarge  the  soul  of  man.  How  in  such 
passages  as  these  Ruskin  awakens  our  imaginative 
sympathy  with  the  universe,  teaching  us  to  multiply, 
for  instance,  by  the  knowledge  whence  the  great 
rivers  come,  the  solemnity  of  the  sight  of  them  in 
defile  or  in  estuary.  What  interest  all  this  realisation 
of  life  brings  into  life  !  Surely,  he  who  should  feel 
habitually  as  Ruskin  teaches  us  to  feel,  merely  in 
this  one  chapter,  would  be  rich  with  the  bare  necessaries, 
and  certainly  would  want  no  amusements  or  excite- 
ments, even  on  a  rainy  day,  knowing  the  snow  to 
be  falling,  the  brooks  to  be  rushing,  behind  the  mist 
on  the  mountains.  Nay,  he  would  have  things  to  look 
forward  to  as  others  look  forward  to  the  newspaper 
or  the  theatre.  What  dramas  are  the  skies  preparing  ? 
What  pageants  will  be  held  at  sunset  ? 


RUSKIN   AS  A  REFORMER  309 


IV 


Instead  of  which,  we  privileged  folk  .  .  .  well,  let 
us  drop  a  veil  over  the  futilities,  the  wasteful  vanities, 
with  which  we  cheat  our  tedious  leisure,  while  the 
leisure,  harder  won,  of  our  less  fortunate  brethren  is 
employed,  let  us  say,  in  reading  betting  news  and 
accounts  of  murders  and  executions  ;  a  vicious  circle 
of  overwork  and  idleness,  of  waste  and  lack  of 
opportunity.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  we  are  taught 
by  Ruskin  a  virtuous  circle  of  virtuous  efficacy  : 
intellectual  and  aesthetic  interests  being  not  merely 
wholesome  and  ennobling  in  themselves,  but  freeing 
us  from  the  pursuit,  often  unjust,  and  always  selfish, 
of  superfluous  materialities  and  wasteful  vanities, 
liberating  our  minds  and  lives,  and  incidentally  the  lives 
and  minds  of  others,  from  the  grindstone.  From  the 
grindstone.  This  metaphor  inevitably  enters  my  mind 
with  the  remembrance  of  another  passage  of  just  such 
passionate  imagination,  in  this  same  volume  of 
"  Modern  Painters " — the  description  of  Turner's 
"Wind  Mill."  "Turning  round  a  couple  of  stones 
for  the  mere  pulverisation  of  human  food,"  he  writes, 
"  is  not  noble  work  for  the  winds."  The  half 
page  gives  the  essence  of  Ruskin's  philosophy,  because 
it  gives  the  whole  of  his  strong  harmonious  mode  of 
feeling.  It  does  more  than  merely  show  the  religious 
quality  of  Ruskin,  which  places  him  alongside  of  Isaiah, 
of  St.  Francis,  and  the  great  nameless  makers  of 
primaeval  myths,  to  whom  the  forces  of  nature  are 
neither  masters  nor  servants,  but  brethren,  recreated 


310  RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER 

(as  all  things  are  recreated  in  the  act  of  thought)  in 
the  image  of  man's  own  higher  nature.  It  shows, 
also,  his  very  noble  and  very  original  intuition  of  the 
comparative  values  of  different  kinds  of  work,  his 
craving  for  such  work  as  shall  be  fruitful,  not  merely 
for  the  belly  but  for  the  soul. 

Some  of  us  see  the  wind  as  a  thing  to  grind  corn, 
and  the  stream  as  a  thing  to  spin  cotton  ;  and  we  have, 
many  of  us,  alas,  from  lazy  conformity  with  the  baser 
practicality  of  our  time,  grown  almost  to  think  that 
setting  natural  forces  (even  if  polluted  in  so  doing) 
thus  to  provide  us  food  and  clothing,  is  doing  them  a 
kind  of  honour,  allowing  them,  mere  soulless  things, 
to  share  the  life  of  creatures  having  minds,  to  wit, 
ourselves.  Ruskin  has  shown  (despite  theology 
asserting  that  the  world  was  made  to  be  man's 
kitchen-garden)  that  our  human  life  was  worth  partici- 
pating in,  that  our  human  souls  existed  ("  where  a 
soul  can  be  discerned  ")  just  in  proportion  as  either 
employs  Nature  for  something  beyond  preparing  food 
or  providing  clothing.  He  has  not  been  hoodwinked 
by  fine  phrases  about  "  saving  human  labour."  The 
labour  is  not  saved  if  it  is  set  merely  to  other  work, 
as  stupefying  and  as  merely  hand  to  mouth  as  that 
you  took  it  from.  There  is  gain  only  if,  setting  the 
winds  to  grind  and  the  waters  to  spin,  we  set  the  men 
and  women  hitherto  employed  at  loom  or  grindstone 
to  watch  the  winds  and  streams,  to  feel  their  life  and 
rejoice  in  it.  There  is  gain  even  if,  by  reducing 
natural  forces  to  drudgery,  a  certain  proportion  among 
us,  having  ceased  to  use  our  muscles  for  such  purposes, 
employ  our  minds  in  thoughts  of  higher  knowledge 


RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER  311 

and  wider  kindliness.  But,  in  reality,  we  employ  this 
privileged  freedom  of  mind  and  time  mainly  to 
calculate  how  to  get  more  out  of  the  natural  forces 
— more  money  out  of  their  produce  and  more 
satisfactions  of  vanity  out  of  the  money.  This  passage 
forms  a  fit  introduction  to  Ruskin's  economical  and 
socialistic  views. 


Economical  and  socialistic,  in  the  sense  neither 
of  orthodox  political  economy  nor  of  ordinary  socialism, 
Ruskin's  scheme,  elaborated  with  little  knowledge 
of  economic  science  or  of  the  discipline  of  science 
of  any  kind,  strikes  us  at  first  as  a  hopeless  jumble. 
He  is  an  individualist,  an  opponent  of  collectivism. 
He  has  a  theory  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  labour  which 
seems  to  come  out  of  some  Marxian  pamphlet ;  and, 
by  its  side,  definitions  of  equitable  exchange  and 
summings  up  of  the  dependence  of  value  on  imagi- 
native and  emotional  causes,  which  foreshadow  the 
deepest  analysis  of  Tarde's  "  Logique  Soctale."  But 
when  we  look  at  Ruskin's  books  *on  economy  in  the 
light  of  his  other  work,  we  find  the  clue  through  this 
confusion  ;  and  we  rejoice  that  his  lack  of  scientific 
training  and  his  unbridled  personal  assertiveness  have 
made  him  misconceive  the  very  subject  treated  by  other 
economists,  and  answer  them  so  often  at  cross  purposes. 
For,  while  the  followers  of  Mill  or  Marx  have  amply 
furnished  us  with  treatises  (more  or  less  logical  and 
more  or  less  narrow-minded)  on  the  question  of 
how  and  by  whom  wealth  is  really  produced, 


312  RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER 

Ruskin,  following  only  his  passionate  human  sense, 
has  given  us  what  is  wholly  different :  a  theory  how 
wealth  ought  to  be  spent.  This  way  of  looking  at 
the  subject  (notwithstanding  some  wrong-headedness 
and  much  quibbling)  enlarges  and  corrects  political 
economy  even  on  the  mere  scientific  side,  introducing 
the  consideration  of  factors  such  as  are  nowadays 
beginning  to  sweep  away  the  recent  notions  of 
"  historical  materialism,"  and  setting  the  question  of 
productive  and  unproductive  labour  in  a  more  perfect 
manner  than  any  other  writer  on  economics,  orthodox 
or  socialist,  whom  I  know.  I  could  quote  twenty 
passages  from  the  "  Political  Economy  of  Art "  and 
from  "  Unto  this  Last "  alone,  which,  were  they  taken 
to  heart,  would  improve  not  only  economic  theory 
as  propounded  in  books,  but  economic  practice  as 
it  enters  into  the  life  of  every  well-to-do  man  and 
woman.  That  national  wealth  is  meaningless  save 
as  equivalent  of  national  happiness ;  that  he  who 
spends  deals  not  with  his  money  only,  but  with  the 
mode  of  occupation,  the  present  bodily  and  spiritual 
welfare,  the  future  misery  or  comfort,  of  those  his 
money  sets  <to  work  ;  that  every  object  of  luxury 
consumed  without  improvement  to  the  consumers' 
bodily  or  spiritual  efficiency,  is  so  much  human  labour 
destroyed,  and  so  much  human  life  and  happiness 
wasted  ;  that,  in  fact,  there  is  as  much  morality  or 
immorality  in  the  mode  of  spending  wealth  as  in  that 
of  acquiring  it,  and  that  every  prosperous  person  is, 
however  unconsciously,  the  honest  or  dishonest  steward 
of  his  community  ;  these  are  the  chief  headings  of 
Ruskin's  political  economy.  These  are  the  truths 


RUSKIN  AS  A  REFORMER  313 

which  Ruskin  has  guessed  in  their  main  features  and 
elaborated,  with  the  unerring  sight  of  deepest 
sympathy,  in  every  kind  of  detail.  And  they  are 
truths  which,  if  we  saw  and  felt  them  thoroughly, 
would,  as  I  hinted,  -add  a  great  new  factor  to  all 
economic  problems :  the  factor  of  moral  and  imagi- 
native selection,  of  an  idee  force  (in  M.  Fouillee's  phrase) 
acting  as  an  economic  determinant. 


VI 


I  have  spoken  of  moral  and  imaginative  preference. 
I  ought  to  have  added,  to  do  justice  to  Ruskin's  special 
genius,  "  and  aesthetic."  For  it  seems  to  me  that 
Ruskin  shows,  in  his  own  person,  that  such  aspirations 
after  justice,  kindliness  and  simplicity  of  life  are  the 
result  of  a  wide  sweep  of  imagination,  which  feels 
distant  evil  as  discordant  with  good  at  hand  ;  and, 
even  more,  of  that  habit  of  harmony,  that  craving 
for  contemplative  satisfaction,  which  make  up  the 
aesthetic  nature.  I  have  insisted  on  the  importance 
of  this  aesthetic  side  for  an  even  weightier  reason  : 
that  a  belief  in  it  is  the  deepest  basis  of  Ruskin's  hopes 
for  social  improvement.  Increased  sympathy  and 
self-restraint,  usually  the  only  factors  thereof  which 
moralists  take  into  consideration,  are  thought  of  (or 
rather  felt]  by  Ruskin  as  the  means  of  substituting 
the  interests  and  pleasures  of  the  imagination  for  the 
exorbitant  interests  and  pleasures  of  sensuality,  of 
vanity  or  of  acquisitiveness. 

There  would    be  food  enough  and  shelter  enough 


314  RUSKIN   AS  A   REFORMER 

and  leisure  in  the  world  for  every  one,  such  is  Ruskin's 
unformulated  thought,  if  every  one  would  be  satisfied 
with  such  superfluous  wealth,  with  such  superior 
power,  as  is  represented  by  the  spiritual  possession 
and  spiritual  multiplication  of  everything  that  is  and 
can  be  beautiful.  Like  every  great  dream  of  universal 
happiness,  Ruskin's  conception  of  God's  kingdom 
on  earth  is  that  of  a  kingdom  of  the  spirit.  "  None 
of  us  yet  know,"  he  wrote  in  "  The  Eagle's  Nest," 
"what  fairy  palaces  we  may  build  of  beautiful  thought, 
bright  fancies,  satisfied  memories,  noble  histories, 
faithful  sayings,  treasure-houses  of  precious  and  restful 
thoughts,  which  care  cannot  disturb  nor  pain  make 
gloomy,  nor  poverty  take  away."  And  the  impor- 
tance of  the  teaching  of  Ruskin  is  largely,  as  I  said 
at  the  beginning,  that  he  gave  us  not  merely  the 
conception  of  a  higher,  wider,  less  selfish  and  more 
active  life,  but  that  he  gave  us,  in  the  unintended 
revelations  of  his  own  personality,  the  proof  that  such 
a  life  can  actually  be  lived.  No  man,  perhaps,  has 
ever  possessed  so  great  a  power  of  living  in  all  the 
things  which  increase,  instead  of  diminishing,  by  use 
and  sharing  ;  from  the  great  mountain,  whose  image 
ennobled  further  the  nobility  of  the  buildings  with 
which  he  connected  it,  as  in  the  splendid  Matterhorn 
passage  in  the  "Stones  of  Venice,"  down  to  the  rooms 
of  the  inn  at  Champagnole,  where  he  "  rejoiced  the 
more  in  every  pleasure  that  it  was  not  new.'1  I  have 
chosen  this  illustration  because  it  exemplifies  what  he 
was  fond  of  preaching,  the  increasing  fertility  of  all 
beautiful  and  noble  things  under  the  faithful  tillage  of 
our  love. 


RUSKIN  AS  A   REFORMER  315 

Alas,  such  tillage  is  beyond  the  power  of  most 
men,  and  few,  very  few  of  us,  ill -organised  and 
unselected  creatures,  life's  paupers  or  invalids,  however 
rich  in  money  or  robust  in  body,  can  "  see  and  possess 
royally,"  as  Ruskin  did,  the  spiritual  kingdoms  of 
the  earth.  Mankind  at  large,  leisured  and  well-to-do, 
and  even  intellectually  cultivated,  has  not  the  health 
or  energy  or  staying  power  to  live  or  wish  to  live 
in  such  a  kingdom  of  the  spirit.  Even  apart  from 
sensuality,  sloth  or  the  weakling's  need  for  excitement, 
we  still  require,  for  the  most  part,  to  be  kept  alive 
by  Ibsen's  "  vital  lies,"  ballasted  by  prejudice,  stiffened 
into  consistency  by  vanity,  and  tempted  into  activity 
by  every  lust  and  covetousness  :  and,  as  for  the 
incentives  of  imaginative  pleasure  and  higher  sympathy, 
if  we  had  only  them,  we  should  most  of  us  die  in  the 
workhouse.  We  are  not  very  highly  evolved  or  well 
organised  creatures  so  far.  Ruskin  could  never  realise 
this.  And,  on  the  whole,  it  is  fortunate  he  could  not, 
since,  although  it  made  him  unjust  and  abusive  where 
others  would  be  merely  self-contemptuous  and  hope- 
fully patient,  it  enabled  him  to  fulfil  his  vocation 
as  a  great  spiritual  precursor.  Every  religion,  in  its 
noblest  parts,  is,  after  all,  a  counsel  of  perfection, 
ennobling  and  lastingly  efficacious  just  in  proportion 
as  it  can  influence  only  the  chosen  few.  And  the 
highest  ethical  use  of  a  religion  is  thus  to  influence, 
thus  to  select,  the  capable,  and  to  produce  in  them 
a  higher  standard  of  capacity  for  those  below  to  rise 
by.  Ruskin's  counsel  of  perfection  is  different  from 
those  we  are  accustomed  to,  but  it  is  not,  therefore, 
more  far-fetched.  It  is  not  more  unlikely  that 


3i6  RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER 

mankind  may  some  day  seek  its  happiness  in  mountains, 
noble  works  of  art,  generous  thoughts  and  all  the 
sharable  enjoyments  called  aesthetic,  than  that  mankind 
will  learn  to  love  its  neighbour  like  itself.  It  need  not 
be  more  difficult  to  live  in  and  by  an  inner  harmony 
of  one's  soul,  than  to  live  in  God  :  who  knows,  indeed, 
whether  it  would  not  be  identically  the  same  process  ? 


VII 


And  now,  before  concluding  my  very  rough-and- 
ready  tribute  of  gratitude  to  Ruskin,  this  seems  the 
right  place  to  forestall  another  objection  likely  to  be 
made  both  by  believer  and  agnostic,  that  Ruskin, 
namely,  could  frame  what  has  been  called  his  religion 
of  beauty,  because  he  had  the  help,  potent  in  reality  or 
in  delusion,  of  the  other  religion,  the  orthodox  one,  of 
which  he  is  for  ever  talking.  I  am,  on  the  contrary, 
struck  more  and  more  by  the  fact,  that  the  dogmatic 
part  of  this  religion  not  only  masked  from  us  much  of 
the  vital  value  of  Ruskin's  nature,  but  hampered  him 
even  more  in  some  of  his  greatest,  most  natural 
conceptions  :  a  materialistic  and  anthropomorphic 
philosophy,  a  cut  -  and  -  dried  unpsychological  ethic, 
elaborated  in  a  comparatively  ignorant  and  cruel  past, 
and  handed  down,  with  every  kind  of  misinterpretation 
and  quibble,  by  minds  deficient  in  all  historical  sense — 
this,  which  is  the  dogmatic  part  of  every  orthodox 
creed,  could  never  help  the  religious  reality  of  such 
a  soul  as  Ruskin's.  Like  every  great  poetical  mind, 
Ruskin's  was  naturally  pantheistic  ;  not  by  dint  of 


RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER  317 

metaphysical  abstraction  and  the  reduction  of  all 
differences  to  a  uniformity  of  nothingness,  but  through 
the  conception  of  all  things  in  the  terms  of  a  pure  and 
ardent  human  spirit.  There  is  loving  sympathy  in  his 
thought  of  the  leaves  gently  making  room  for  one 
another  ;  and  tragic  solemnity  in  that  of  the  erosion, 
the  gradual  levelling  away,  of  the  great  mountain. 
To  him,  as  to  St.  Francis,  as  to  Goethe  and  Shelley, 
such  processes  were  not  mechanical  but  archangelic. 
Here  the  creed  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up 
interfered  ;  and  instead  of  showing  us  nature  as  he  felt 
it,  desiring,  loving,  struggling,  living,  he  was  bound 
to  explain  it  as  a  passive  machinery  in  the  hands  of 
a  manlike  and  capricious  deity.  I  put  aside  his  un- 
ceasing quibbling  to  explain  the  right  or  wrong  of  an 
artistic  form,  the  superiority  of  a  Gothic  balustrade 
over  a  Palladian,  the  fineness  of  a  rock  by  Turner  and 
the  wretchedness  of  a  rock  by  Salvator  Rosa,  nay, 
questions  of  veneering  and  undercutting,  by  reference 
to  the  Decalogue,  the  Prophets  or  Deuteronomy.  The 
very  crudeness  of  these  things  renders  them  merely 
wearisome,  but  intellectually  harmless.  But  this 
dogmatic  belief  actually  warped  Ruskin's  thought 
and  checked  his  spontaneous  intentions. 

No  man  was  gifted  with  greater  natural  intuition 
of  the  organic,  of  affinity,  growth,  change,  and  all 
those  harmonious  complexities  which  we,  remarking 
them,  call  "  tendencies  "  in  things  ;  yet  he  allowed 
himself  to  think  only  in  terms  of  deliberate  willing, 
ordering,  arranging,  rewarding,  punishing,  in  terms 
of  humanly  devised  machinery  and  wretched  human 
jurisprudence.  With  his  wonderful  eye  for  everything 


3i8  RUSKIN   AS  A   REFORMER 

that  told  of  life,  he  yet  intellectually  knew  of  only 
creation  and  its  theological  correlative,  annihilation. 
How  much  finer  would  have  been  his  historical 
conception  of  art,  had  he  understood  that  the  death 
(as  he  calls  it)  of  a  form  of  art  is  not  a  judgment  from 
heaven,  but  a  process  which  has  its  beneficent  side,  the 
possible  preparation  for  a  fresh  living  form.  Nay,  his 
habit  of  looking  at  the  universe  in  a  way  not  essentially 
different  from  that  of  Dante,  had  an  even  worse  effect, 
depriving  Ruskin,  in  a  serious  degree,  of  real  hope 
in  the  future.  The  notion,  the  result  of  modern 
psychology  from  Spinoza  and  Kant  downwards,  that 
beauty  is  the  name  given  to  certain  relations  of 
proportion,  visible  or  imaginative,  in  harmony  with 
man's  organic  wants,  this  view,  so  really  spiritual 
because  subjective,  and  corresponding  so  happily  with 
that  of  moral  fitness  and  its  imperative,  was  one  which 
naturally  fitted  in  with  Ruskin's  aesthetic  intuitions, 
with  all  his  discoveries  about  form,  composition  and 
imaginative  effect,  and  with  his  aspirations  after  a 
"  spiritual  kingdom  "  it  harmonised  so  perfectly.  But 
Ruskin  believed  that  beauty  was  a  sort  of  entity,  put 
by  the  Creator  into  things,  and  which  it  is  the  duty  of 
man  thence  to  extract ;  and  thinking  thus,  he  naturally 
felt  that  the  preference  for  inferior  art  was  a  form  of 
wickedness,  and  that  artistic  appreciation  must  be 
taught  to  a  stiff-necked  generation  by  dint  of  an 
enormous  amount  of  theological  revilings.  For,  as 
I  said  before,  the  worst  effect  of  his  theological 
bias  upon  Ruskin  is  its  depriving  him  of  real  faith, 
of  hope  in  possible  improvement.  The  idea  of 
spontaneity,  like  the  idea  of  evolution,  is  carefully 


RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER  319 

excluded  by  his  dogmatism.  Now,  the  discovery  or 
invention  of  evolution  has  given  us  a  habit  of  con- 
ceiving life  as  spontaneity  and  adaptation,  above  all, 
as  unconscious,  necessary  improvement,  instead  of 
continual  unquiet  readjustment  and  effort  of  our  little 
human  will ;  and  with  it  has  come  a  kind  of  wider 
optimistic  finality  ;  or  a  possibility,  humbly  and  hope- 
fully, of  doing  without  finality  at  all.  It  is  instructive 
to  compare  with  Ruskin's  harassed  feeling,  that  all 
will  go  wrong  in  the  world  unless  it  be  converted  to 
his  notions,  the  hopeful  serenity  of  even  such  a  pessi- 
mist as  Renan  ;  the  Frenchman's  reassuring  certainty, 
even  in  his  plays  and  dialogues,  that  the  moral  world 
will  live  through  every  crisis,  and  that  the  good  and 
evil  we  fight  and  mourn  about  are  only  our  small 
human  ways  of  looking  at  the  movements  of  a  universe 
which  takes  care  of  itself.  Whereas,  alas,  the  universe 
of  Ruskin  is  (despite  its  singing  streams  and  rejoicing 
mountains)  inert,  mechanical  ;  a  dead  weight  lugged 
about  by  a  personal  (and  on  the  whole  inefficient) 
creator,  and  requiring  to  be  poked  and  scolded  by 
Ruskin  himself. 

VIII 

And  to  sum  up.  When  we  have  separated  what 
Ruskin  can  give  the  future  from  what  (unfortunately 
in  the  long  run,  though  fortunately  at  the  moment) 
Ruskin  got  foisted  on  him  by  the  past,  I  think  we 
shall  see  that  in  Ruskin,  as  in  every  other  great  prophet, 
the  valuable,  the  efficacious  element  was,  not  what 
he  intended  to  teach,  but  the  personality,  the  type 


320  RUSKIN   AS   A   REFORMER 

of  human  power  in  nature,  which  we  feel  through 
all  his  teachings.  Ruskin's  deliberate  intention  was 
to  place  Turner  above  Claude,  Gothic  above  Renais- 
sance, the  Middle  Ages  above  Modern  Times,  Hand 
Labour  above  Machinery,  Protestantism  above 
Catholicism,  and  Biblical  interpretation  above  Scientific. 
But  this  programme  matters  little,  and  soon  will 
matter  not  at  all,  these  questions  sinking  more  and 
more  into  squabbles  about  definitions  and  crusades 
about  names,  the  embodiment  thereof  in  his  work 
being  marked  by  injustice,  violence,  sophistry,  and 
self-contradiction.  But,  meanwhile,  the  real  man,  the 
organised,  intuitive,  unhesitating  creature  of  perception 
and  aspiration,  has  subdued  all  this  to  his  unconscious 
purposes,  and  has  left  us  the  priceless  teachings  of  his 
true  preferences  and  antipathies.  He  has  shown 
us  art,  history,  nature,  enlarged,  transformed  and 
glorified  through  the  loving  energy  of  his  spirit. 
He  has  shown  us  a  scheme  of  life  in  which  greater 
justice  for  all  would  result  merely  from  greater  happi- 
ness of  endowment  of  every  one.  He  has  given  us 
an  example  of  contemplative  union  with  all  living 
things,  and  in  this  contemplative  ecstasy  made  all 
noble  things  alive.  The  most  larklike  soul  of  our 
time,  he  sings  at  heaven's  gates,  and  his  song  makes 
heaven's  gates  be  everywhere  above  us.  Greatest  of 
all  his  gifts,  he  has  given  us  himself:  himself 
unconscious  of  all  the  baser  temptations  which  we 
struggle  with,  and  absorbed  in  happy,  fruitful  thoughts 
and  feelings,  sharable  with  every  free-born  spirit. 

His  work,  as  I  said  before,  is  useless  comparatively 
but  positively  supremely  useful,  because  it  is  a  counsel 


RUSKIN    AS   A   REFORMER  321 

of  perfection  ;  and  one  might  say,  without  exaggera- 
tion, that  the  highest  meaning  we  can  put  into  this 
ceaseless  jostle  of  rapacities  and  vanities  which  we 
now  call  real  life,  would  be  the  hope  that  the  day  may 
come  when  all  mankind,  or  mankind's  flower  at  least, 
will  be  permitted  by  circumstance  and  be  enabled  by 
endowment  to  seek  their  most  natural  happiness  as 
this  real  man  has  really  done. 


21 


ON    MODERN    UTOPIAS 
AN   OPEN   LETTER  TO   H.  G.  WELLS 


ON  MODERN   UTOPIAS 
AN  OPEN   LETTER   TO  H.   G.   WELLS 

IN  placing  your  name  at  the  head  of  a  new  book 
of  my  own,  my  motive  is,  naturally,  to  do  myself 
credit  while  showing  you  honour.  But  I  also  seek  an 
opportunity  of  conversing  with  you  in  that  perfectly 
intimate  manner  so  often  prevented  by  our  own  shy  or 
philistine  personality,  and  possible  only,  perhaps,  under 
the  chaperonage  of  that  most  sympathising  and  unreal 
of  all  phantoms,  the  Reader. 

Our  talk,  of  course,  will  be  about  the  most  wonder- 
ful of  all  your  inventions :  the  planet,  twin  of 
our  earth,  where  (as  Sterne  already  remarked  about 
the  Continent)  things  are  better  done  than  over 
here. 

I  have  just  been  re-reading  your  "Utopia"  and 
your  "Anticipations";  and  my  thoughts  are  still  in 
a  prodigious  welter,  curdling  into  currents  by  no  means 
easy  to  follow,  and  eddying  round  certain  reefs,  with 
or  without  beacons.  One  of  these  recurrent  rocks  is 
that  against  which  our  theological  forefathers  were 
perpetually  breaking  their  logic,  and  to  a  certain  extent 
their  hearts  :  the  question,  if  I  may  give  it  a  name 


3*5 


326  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

formed  by  analogy,  of  the  Inefficacy  of  Grace,  the 
persistence  of  Sin  and  Punishment  in  the  face  of 
Redemption,  the  question  why,  since  there  was  a  royal 
road  to  Heaven,  should  so  many  souls  go  nevertheless 
to  Hell  ?  To  you  and  me,  and  all  who  think  like 
us,  this  self-same  query  recurs  for  ever  in  a  garb  of 
evolutional  philosophy  :  Why  should  progress  be  so 
little  progressive?  Why  should  Utopia  be  ...  well, 
only  Utopia? 

This  is  what  your  books  make  me  ask  myself ; 
whereunto,  also,  your  books  furnish  at  least  an  implicit 
answer,  and  it  is  about  this  mainly  that  I  want  to  have 
a  talk,  because  I  find  that  we  do  not  entirely  agree. 
It  is  perhaps  inevitable.  You  are — and  that  is  the 
usefulness  and  delightfulness  of  you — a  builder  of 
Utopias  ;  and  all  Utopias,  like  all  schemes  of  salvation, 
pivot  upon  an  if.  Every  constructive  reformer  is 
ready  to  set  all  (or  most)  things  right,  providing  only 
you  will  promise  to  obey  him  on  one  little  point, 
or  at  least  grant  this  point  might  have  been  otherwise. 
Thus  :  if  only  people  would  observe  some  particular 
law,  or  (as  more  recent  prophets  prefer)  disobey  every 
law  without  distinction  ;  if  only  people  would  abolish 
private  property,  or  disregard  all  selfish  (or  all 
unselfish  and  merciful)  impulses  ;  if  only  they  would 
be  strictly  communistic,  or  monogamic,  or  hygienic  ; 
if  only  they  would  think  less,  or  drink  less,  or  have 
fewer  children,  or  (saving  your  presence)  have  a  few 
yards  less  of  unnecessary  intestine  ;  if  only  they  would 
follow  the  dictates  of  Lycurgus,  Comte,  Pope  Pius  X., 
Tolstoi,  or  Nietzsche — then,  &c.,  &c.,  &c. — as  if  by 
magic.  But  so  long  as  mankind  obstinately  (brutishly 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  327 

or  sentimentally  or  ignorantly,  as  the  case  may  be) 
declines  to  accept  the  particular  terms  upon  which 
the  particular  speaker  has  fixed  his  fancy,  why,  of 
course,  all  that  mankind  can  possibly  do  will  be  mere 
vanity  and  vexation  ;  for  nothing  equals  the  critical 
acumen  with  which  every  other  scheme  of  redemption 
is  destroyed  by  each  successive  preacher  of  the  one 
thing  needful.  Has  not  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  achieved 
his  comic  masterpiece  in  the  proposal,  following  on 
the  demonstration  of  the  futility  of  all  reforms,  whether 
Whig,  Radical,  Collectivist,  or  Anarchist,  that  the 
efficiency  of  the  citizen  should  be  entrusted  to  an  office 
for  the  breeding  of  human  beings  ? 

But  enough  of  such  examples.  Even  without  them, 
it  is  obvious  that  all  Kingdoms  of  Heaven  depend  on 
an  IF.  The  //  of  your  particular  Utopia,  my  dear 
Mr.  Wells,  is  certainly  the  most  easily  admitted,  if 
not  the  most  easily  granted,  of  all  similar  conditions  ; 
because  it  is  the  least  narrow  and  precise,  and  indeed 
is  not  so  much  expressed  by  yourself  as  perpetually 
suggested  to  the  reader's  own  thoughts.  This  ;/  of 
yours,  this  little  bit  of  perfection  required  by  you, 
as  by  all  other  utopists,  as  a  starting-point  for  all 
improvement,  can,  however,  be  summed  up  in  a  few 
words,  as  follows  :  Progress  might  have  been  and 
might  be  far  rapider  and  more  secure,  and  the  world 
a  less  wretched  and  hopeless  place  for  many  folk,  if 
the  achievements  of  mankind  had  not  been  perpetually 
checked,  deviated,  or  rendered  nugatory,  and  its  power 
of  mind,  heart,  and  will  allowed  in  a  considerable 
degree  to  run  to  waste.  Thus,  if  I  understand  right, 
your  Utopian  planet  beyond  Sirius  differs  from  its 


328  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

twin  world  Earth  exactly  in  so  far  as  its  past  has 
escaped  certain  historical  accidents  which  have  slackened 
our  progress  ;  as  the  seed  of  good  has  fallen  less  often 
on  indifferent  obduracy,  or  been  gobbled  up  less  cer- 
tainly by  self-interest  and  perfunctoriness  ;  as  whatever 
germinating  wisdom  has  not  been  choked  by  routine 
and  prejudice.  There  has  been  less  loss  of  time  and 
effort  and  thought  in  Utopia  ;  that,  take  it  all  round, 
has  been  the  difference  between  it  and  our  poor  Earth. 

Such  an  explanation  fits  into  our  modern  conception 
of  Nature  (in  so  far  as  Nature  can  be  opposed  to  Man) 
as  being  eminently  wasteful  :  millions  of  germs  for  one 
living  organism,  myriads  of  variations  for  one  improve- 
ment. But  even  better  does  this  explanation  tally  with 
the  evidence  of  everyday  life,  of  ingenious  thoughts 
become  dead  letter,  fruitful  rules  grown  to  barren 
routines,  preferences  to  prejudices,  convictions  to 
superstitions ;  and  individual  talents,  power,  good  in- 
tentions, becoming  not  merely  the  paving-stones,  but 
the  very  brick  and  mortar,  of  hell. 

In  your  first  chapter  of  "  Anticipations  "  you  have 
analysed  how  the  coming  together  of  the  two  inven- 
tions of  the  steam  pump  and  the  tram-rail,  both  applied 
to  the  old  arrangements  of  the  stage-coach,  has  bound 
us  over  to  the  intolerable  stereotyped  cumbersomeness 
of  a  railroad  system.  The  chapter  is  a  profoundly 
suggestive  analysis  of  the  deviation  of  what  might  be  by 
what  is.  Such  spoiling  of  new  wine  by  old  bottles  was 
recognised  long  ago  in  the  domain  of  conduct  and 
character  ;  and  half  the  novels  written  are  unconscious 
essays  on  the  ruin  of  powers  for  happiness  and  good  by 
the  institutions  and  arrangements  made  to  secure  good 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  329 

and  happiness  in  other  times  or  for  other  persons  : 
marriage,  inheritance,  education,  profession  ;  all  inven- 
tions which,  when  and  where  they  do  not  help,  inevit- 
ably impede. 

And  you  yourself,  in  your  very  remarkable  little 
essay  called  "  Scepticism  of  the  Instrument,"  have 
drawn  attention  to  the  intellectual  loss  due  to  the  very 
forms  of  our  speech  and  the  categories  of  our  thinking 
impoverishing  and  distorting  all  detail  and  reality  to 
suit  lopsided  formula.  In  short,  nearly  everything 
which  serves  a  purpose  is  apt  to  become  a  nuisance  ; 
and  economy  on  one  side  implies,  at  least  nine  times 
in  ten,  waste  of  something  on  another.  Wastefulness  : 
everything  under  the  sun  (and  probably  inside  the  sun) 
is  wastefulness !  Such  will  have  to  be  the  burden  of 
the  latter-day  Ecclesiastes  ;  and  in  so  far  our  latter- 
day  pessimism  is  an  improvement  upon  that  of  the 
Preacher  of  even  more  pessimistic  and  more  wasteful 
times.  For  the  lesson  of  history  as  well  as  of  natural 
science  is  that  wastefulness  tends  to  diminish  and 
eliminate  itself;  and  that,  conversely,  the  obedience 
to  purpose  increases  in  all  things  just  in  proportion  as 
a  purpose  forms  itself  and  emerges  out  of  the  random 
lurchings  and  fumblings  of  the  universe.  But  as  yet 
purpose  has  but  little  to  say  ;  and  Wastefulness,  which 
we  call  Chance,  has  the  best  of  it.  I  have  just  alluded 
to  the  Parable  of  the  Sower  and  the  Seed  ;  it  has  an 
application  wider  than  the  one  which  British  Infants 
are  to  be  taught,  denominationally  or  not  denomina- 
tionally, in  or  out  of  school  hours  :  The  seed  falls 
on  the  highway  and  is  trodden  to  mud  by  the  passers- 
by,  whom  it  might  have  fed  ;  the  fowls  of  the  air  pick 


330  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

it  out  of  the  furrow  and  devour  it ;  there  are  thousands 
of  square  miles  of  rock  upon  which  it  is  parched,  and 
millions  of  acres  of  thorns  in  which  it  is  choked  ;  the 
only  exaggeration  in  the  whole  allegory  being  the 
hundred-fold  multiplication  of  the  one  little  grain 
which  chances  upon  good  soil.  "  He  that  hath  ears 
to  hear  let  him  hear,"  concludes  the  Master  when  he 
has  set  that  forth.  And  we  latter-day  believers  have 
heard  the  parable  as  a  fair  account  of  the  ways  of  the 
Universe  and  of  Man's  poor  efforts  in  their  midst. 
Only,  my  dear  Mr.  Wells,  there  is  a  point  which  we 
are  apt  to  overlook  in  this  whole  depressing  story  : 
the  rocks  and  the  thorns,  the  greedy  pigeons,  described 
as  if  they  had  come  into  being  only  to  frustrate  that 
well-meaning  agriculturist,  had  been  in  that  place  long 
before  the  Sower  himself ;  nay,  the  grain  existed  long 
before  he  took  it  into  his  head  to  use  it  for  bread  and 
sow  it  in  his  furrows  ;  what  he  called  barren  soil  was 
such  only  in  the  eyes  of  his  hungry  and  hopeful  effort  ; 
what  he  called  thorns  or  weeds  were  inferior  to  other 
plants  merely  because  they  did  not  afford  him  suste- 
nance ;  and  the  seed  was  wasted  when  it  got  into  the 
crops  of  the  birds  only  because  he  had  intended  that 
it  should  become  bread  for  his  belly.  In  other  words, 
wastefulness  is,  as  the  Jesuit  moralists  would  have  said, 
a  matter  of  direction  of  the  intention  ;  and  the  things 
Man  happens  to  require  for  sustenance  of  his  body 
and  soul  are  not  necessarily  the  same  which  the  universe 
intends  producing  ;  nay,  it  may  be  man's  self-engrossed 
imagination  which  attributes  to  the  universe  intentions 
of  any  sort.  I  have  made  this  little  digression  in  order 
to  forestall  from  the  first  any  accusation  of  pessimism, 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  331 

particularly  of  that  Schopenhauer  type  which  holds 
that  the  universe  (including  its  expression  the  Wille} 
is  always  interfering  with  Man's  real  interests,  to  wit, 
complete  or  partial  self-annihilation.  All  that  I  mean 
is,  that  given  that  Man,  with  his  sensitiveness  to  pain 
and  consequent  arrangements  for  trying  to  escape  it, 
is  merely  one  part,  and  a  recently  superadded  part,  of 
what  we  patronisingly  designate  as  the  Great  Whole, 
there  is  no  wonder  in  much  of  man's  ingenuity  and 
effort,  like  the  seed  of  the  parable,  and  from  the 
Sower's  point  of  view,  being  wasted.  The  matter  for 
astonishment  to  me  is  rather  how,  despite  the  stones 
and  brambles  and  thievish  birds,  there  should  already 
have  come  to  be  so  many  bushels  of  wheat  and  barley 
and  oats,  so  many  well-baked  loaves,  and  even  the 
most  refined  and  least  nourishing  cakes,  metaphorical 
brioches,  for  instance,  of  art,  sentiment,  and  ideal,  such 
as  that  French  princess  proposed  to  offer  people  in 
years  of  famine.  It  is  this  view  of  things  in  general 
which,  among  other  reasons,  prevents  my  being  much 
surprised,  or  even  much  discouraged,  at  our  planet 
differing  from  its  twin  star  Utopia. 

But  the  indifference,  construed  by  pessimists  into 
hostility,  of  the  Universe  to  man's  rather  tardy  arrival 
and  claims,  is  by  no  means  the  only  reason  for  the 
slowness  of  his  progress.  As  I  have  already  hinted 
with  reference  to  marriage,  education,  and  similar 
useful  encumbrances,  it  is  man's  own  presence  and  his 
own  requirements  which  are  really  most  to  blame  in 
this  unsatisfactory  business. 

He  is,  on  the  whole,  paying  the  price  of  his  own 
refuse-heaps.  "  Refuse-heaps  !  "  exclaims  the  sanitary 


332  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

reformer  and  patentee  for  wholesale  Rubbish-into-Fuel- 
Conversion  (half  in  Latin,  of  course,  and  half  in 
Greek)  :  "  and  pray,  why  should  there  be  any  refuse- 
heaps  at  all  ? "  Because  the  refuse-heap  is  the  chief 
instrument  by  which  all  progress  has  been  achieved  : 
the  refuse-heap  called  turn  about  unfitness,  failure,  vice, 
sin,  dishonour,  or  merely  illegality,  on  to  which  Natural 
Selection  and  Human  Selection  have  for  ever  been 
throwing  whatever,  at  any  particular  moment,  happened 
to  be  in  the  way  of  their  sweepings  and  garnishings  ; 
whatever,  like  the  fossil  which  Thoreau  flung  out  of 
his  hermitage  window,  was  more  bother  than  it  was 
worth.  This  rough-and-ready  method  has  been,  to 
say  the  least,  expensive.  Think  of  that  destruction 
of  possibilities  !  The  variations  suppressed  for  ever 
merely  that  one  type  should  gain  the  preponderance 
needful  for  a  few  years  !  Why,  early  civilisation  (and 
perhaps  not  so  very  early  either)  must  have  been  a 
perpetual  killing  off  of  individuals  too  sensitive,  too 
imaginative,  too  independent,  too  good,  in  fact,  for 
patriarchal  and  military  civilisations  ;  even  as,  nowa- 
days, individuals  too  good  for  strenuous  commercialism 
find  themselves  discouraged  in  a  quieter  though  equally 
crushing  manner.  And  not  only  individuals  have  been 
exterminated,  but  in  each  survivor  many  a  possibility 
sacrificed  to  a  standard  of  necessary  righteousness. 
Nay,  every  advance  in  morality  has  meant  the  sacrifice 
of  all  decent  people  who  still  clung  to  the  practice, 
whatever  it  might  be,  which  began  to  be  branded  as 
immoral  ;  even  as  manslaughter  and  vendetta  will 
become  the  exclusive  privilege  of  "  Born  Criminals  " 
with  odd-shaped  ears  and  a  taste  for  tattooing  (see 


ON    MODERN    UTOPIAS  333 

Lombroso)  only  by  the  vigorous  destruction  of  all 
possible  Othellos  and  Orestes,  with  whatever  chivalry 
and  heroism  there  may  be  in  them. 

Mr.  Lester  Ward  and  Mrs.  Stetson  have  told  us  of 
an  irreparable  loss  of  time  and  opportunity  accompany- 
ing the  necessary  subordination  of  the  female  to  the 
male,   and    the  passage   from   the  matriarchal   to  the 
patriarchal  state  of  society.     What  is  a  great  deal  more 
certain  (though  we  blush  to  mention  it)  is  the  fearful 
waste  of  excellent  qualities  (of  which  we  may  judge  by 
Aspasia,  Mary  Magdalene,  poor  Gretchen,  and  sundry 
humble  or  eminent   ladies  of  our  own  acquaintance) 
which  must  have  attended,  and  still  attend,  the  needful 
segregation  of  the  woman    destined    for  motherhood 
from    the   woman    whose    sterile    and    dishonourable 
vocation  has,  after  all,  considerably  helped  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  lofty  monogamic  household.     In  fact, 
it   is   doubtful    whether   progress   has   lost    more   by 
incursions  of  barbarians  and  bouts  of  fanaticism  than 
by  the  ruthlessness  of  its  own  slow  and  unintelligent 
methods.    We  do  not  like  to  teach  this  to  our  children, 
or  even  to  admit  it  to  ourselves  ;  we  should  be  glad — 
yes,  even  you  and  I,  dear  Mr.  Wells,  let  alone  the 
followers  of  Comte — if  we  could  lay  all  such  mischief 
at  the   door  of  wicked   tyrants,  and   capitalists,  and 
cunning  priests  (those  "  Bonzes,"  "  Fakirs,"  and  "  Old 
Men  of  the  Mountain,"  who  were  such  a  comfort  to 
eighteenth-century  optimism),  and  blink  the  suspicion 
that  morality  has  employed  immoral  methods,  and  pro- 
gress cost  some  stagnation  and   regression.     We  are 
not  yet  spiritually  strong  and  elastic  enough  to  admit 
of  moral  instability  and  adaptation.     We  still  require 


334  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

the  safety  of  sanctions,  the  corroboration  of  prejudices, 
the  exhilaration  of  mutual  anathema.  On  our  fatiguing 
and  puzzling  journey  towards  recognition  of  realities 
we  want  to  be  comforted  with  what  Ibsen's  doctor 
calls  "  Vital  Lies."  And  "  Vital  Lies,"  however  in- 
dispensable for  an  individual,  a  class,  or  a  period,  are 
lies  nevertheless,  involving  failure,  catastrophe,  or  mere 
perfunctoriness ;  and  as  such  they  also  are  another 
instance  of  the  wasteful  system  on  which  human  pro- 
gress is  carried  on.  Wastefulness !  Wastefulness 
everywhere,  says  the  Preacher.  The  refuse-heap  be- 
comes indeed  ever  smaller  and  smaller,  fewer  useless 
things  remaining  to  be  thrown  away,  fewer  useful 
things  being  thrown  away  with  them  ;  but  the  very 
process  by  which  all  this  happens  is  wasteful  itself. 
Nor  is  it  surprising  if  the  conscious  spirit  of  man  is 
thus  wasteful,  in  however  steadily  decreasing  a  ratio, 
since  it  has  arisen,  after  all,  out  of  the  unconscious 
automatism  of  the  universe.  And  even  as  Pascal's 
Divinity  could  afford  injustice  because  he  had  eternity 
to  right  it  in,  so  the  Forces  of  Nature  can  be  dignified 
and  patient  because  they  are  not  flustered  by  pleasure 
and  pain  :  why  should  they  mind  how  long  it  takes 
to  attain  anything  when  very  likely  they  do  not  want 
to  attain  anything  at  all  ?  , 

Such  considerations,  I  imagine  you  answering,  may 
afford  a  metaphysical  Lenten  diet  for  the  lay  priests  of 
progress,  the  responsible  and  busy  Samurai  of  Utopia, 
during  their  yearly  retreat  among  the  polar  ice-fields. 
But,  practically  speaking,  Mankind  is  separate  from 
all  these  cosmic  forces.  And  seeing  that  Mankind  is 
conscious  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  consequently  gifted 


ON   MODERN    UTOPIAS  335 

with  foresight  and  volition,  why  the  deuce  should  it 
not  apply  this  foresight  and  volition  to  arranging  a 
more  tolerable  earth?  And  here  we  are  back,  my 
dear  builder  of  Utopias,  at  the  original  //  of  your 
whole  system.  For  what  has  made  the  difference 
between  your  decent  and  decently  happy  planet  and 
this  Earth  as  seen  from  the  top  of  a  Strand  omnibus 
has  not  been  the  accident  of  a  war  less  or  a  discovery 
more,  nor  even  the  presence  of  a  greater  number 
of  persons  of  virtue  or  talent,  but  simply  that,  in 
Utopia,  people  in  general  have  been  less  inexplicably 
stupid  and  lazy  and  heartless  and  self-indulgent  than 
here. 

Less  inexplicably.  For  I  feel  in  all  your  anger  and 
all  your  humorous  sadness,  even  as  in  all  the  anathemas 
of  all  the  prophets,  the  sting  of  the  inexplicable  :  the 
human  race  is  stiff-necked,  obstinately  blind  to  its  own 
good.  Now  here  it  seems  to  me  that  you,  like  all  the 
floaters  of  Kingdoms  of  Heaven,  are  distinctly  unjust. 
The  human  race,  I  venture  to  say,  has  not  shown,  and 
does  not  show,  itself  one  bit  more  stupid,  heartless, 
lazy,  or  self-indulgent  than  you  or  I  would  in  its  place. 
There  has  been  wastefulness  on  the  part  of  the  Forces 
of  Nature,  the  Great  Abstractions  who  are  indifferent. 
But  as  to  human  beings,  they  have  been  applying  their 
poor  wits  and  will,  under  extremely  trying  circum- 
stances, to  their  daily  and  hourly  needs ;  needs  com- 
prising rest  and  enjoyment  (what  we  moralists  call 
"  sloth  "  and  "  self-indulgence  ")  quite  as  much  as  the 
more  obvious  renovation  of  their  tissues  and  replenish- 
ing of  the  race . 

In  so  doing,  like  the  famous  savages  of  rhetoricians, 


336  ON  MODERN   UTOPIAS 

mankind  frequently  cuts  down  the  tree  for  the  fruit,  and 
eats  its  corn  as  spinach  ;  it  damages  to-morrow,  but  it 
satisfies  to-day  ;  and  to-day  is  imperious.  Mankind 
also  damages  its  neighbour  and  posterity,  but  it  satisfies 
(I  must  repeat  it)  the  ego's  immediate  and  cruel  wants. 
Hence  vice,  crime  and  (more  detrimental  still  in  the 
long  run)  all  the  various  perfunctorinesses  and  frauds 
which  raise  your  indignation  legitimately,  but  ought 
not  (for  you  are  a  great  novelist)  to  excite  your 
astonishment — you  who  described  the  wiles  of  the 
hungry  pseudo-writer  who  did  poor  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Lewisham  out  of  their  typewriter's  deposit.  You  are, 
for  instance,  angry  that  our  schools  should  not  be 
better  adapted  to  the  education  of  the  young.  But 
our  schools  (the  one  which  educated  Kipps,  for  in- 
stance) are  perfectly  adapted  to  their  real  vital  object, 
namely,  furnishing  a  livelihood  to  sundry  genteel, 
incompetent  moralists  and  scholars,  and,  on  the  other 
side,  ridding  parents  and  guardians  of  the  harassing 
responsibility  and  presence  of  unruly  youngsters. 
English  people,  less  hypocritical  because  more  practical 
than  Latins,  will  even  admit  that  seeming  perfunctori- 
ness  is  no  drawback  :  Eton  is  useful  in  furnishing  a 
lad  with  presentable  future  friends  ;  Alma  Mater  ^  with 
her  Schola  Logics,  Schola  Mathematics,  Schola  Musics, 
and  other  Faust-like  inscriptions  over  Gothic  doors, 
turns  a  boy  into  a  man  worthy  of  a  latch-key.  The 
simple  truth  was  ingenuously  put  to  this  present  writer 
by  the  youth  who  averred  that  Greek  and  Latin, 
doubtless  Hellas  and  Imperial  Rome,  were  useful  "  to 
pass  exams."  Half  of  our  institutions,  of  our  codes, 
morals,  ideals,  believe  me,  dear  Mr.  Wells,  are  useful 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  337 

"  to  pass  exams  "  ;  and  exams  are  useful — well,  in 
order  not  to  have  to  pass  any  more. 

Nor  are  the  offences  against  progress  always  of  this 
smug  British  type  :  in  Southern  countries  (let  us  say) 
one  is  horrified  by  the  suffering  of  galled  and  over- 
laden horses  ;  and  one  is  forced  to  pick  one's  way 
and  stop  one's  nose  in  the  public  street.  But  can  we 
expect  the  miserable  carter  to  be  more  careful  (even 
if  he  had  the  money)  of  his  harness  than  of  his  own 
ragged  clothes,  still  less  to  unload  half  his  freight  and 
come  back  again,  when  his  day's  work  and  pay  depends 
on  doing  that  broiling  journey  a  certain  number  of 
times  ?  And  where  would  you  have  the  sluttish  house- 
wife throw  her  messes  when  she  has  no  place  save  the 
convenient  thoroughfare  ? 

This  illustration  is,  I  fear,  rather  humble  and  repul- 
sive. But  the  lives  and  souls  of  most  folk  are  (and 
still  more,  have  been)  humble  and  repulsive  :  ill-fed, 
unwashed,  untaught,  often  tired  and  nearly  always 
hurried  ;  so  that  one  wonders  how,  even  like  those 
poor  Southern  peasants,  mankind  has  yet  been  able 
to  put  by,  year  by  year,  more  savings  in  the  bank, 
and  swell  the  capital  of  good. 

"  II  faut  vivre,  Monseigneur,"  says  the  human  race, 
like  the  jail-bird  to  the  Minister.  And  you  know, 
dear  Mr.  Wells,  that  you  abhor  the  only  answer  pos- 
sible to  that,  Schopenhauer's  and  the  other  pessimists'  ; 
you  refuse  to  say,  "Je  n'en  vois  point  la  necessite." 
And  meanwhile,  living,  because  it  has  meant  dying 
less  soon  and  suffering  less  constantly,  has  slowly 
brought  its  remedy  with  it.  The  avoidance  of  pain 
and  the  snatching  a  scanty  pleasure  have  been  man's 

22 


338  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

real  and  sole  business,  with  the  consequence,  as  I  have 
repeated  too  often,  of  much  destruction,  of  much 
clogging  and  littering,  but  with  the  consequence  also 
of  constantly  increasing  order  and  forethought  and 
self-control.  For  the  lessening  of  our  own  discomfort 
forces  a  certain  restraint  on  our  neighbour  ;  the  lessen- 
ing of  his  discomfort  a  certain  restraint  on  us  ;  fore- 
sight grows  into  imagination,  imagination  into  sym- 
pathy ;  appetite  itself  ends  by  teaching  moderation, 
and  self-defence,  respect  for  others  ;  thus,  as  Professor 
Baldwin  has  shown  us,  the  child,  by  gradually  increasing 
perception  of  the  outer  world  and  increasing  experience 
of  other  folk,  grows  at  length  into  the  adult  citizen. 
You,  yourself,  dear  Mr.  Wells,  have  written  a  more 
convincing  book  than  this  "  Modern  Utopia,"  your 
book  of  "  Anticipations,"  of  how  the  world  is  likely  to 
progress  by  the  mere  shifting  and  pushing  of  its  short- 
sighted and  selfish  activities.  We  shall,  even  as  we 
have,  but  with  increasing  speed,  become  more  sound 
and  sane,  more  leisurely  and  sensitive  and  thoughtful, 
as  we  become  less  poor  and  ignorant.  Our  added 
leisure  and  finer  sensitiveness  will  enable  us  to  do  less 
mischief  in  seeking  our  good,  and  make  us  more 
dependent  for  our  comfort  on  the  comfort  of  others. 
Our  cleaner,  more  ventilated  fancy  will  sicken  at  whiffs 
from  even  distant  refuse-heaps  left  by  less  squeamish 
and  more  hurried  ancestors,  refuse-heaps  into  which 
they  swept  what  they  could  not  deal  with,  and  let  it 
fester  and  breed  disease,  such  as  industrial  exploitation, 
criminal  justice,  marriage  laws,  prostitution,  and  so 
forth,  which  we  still  accept  as  parts  of  public  sanitation. 
Quickly  or  slowly,  man,  asserting  himself  in  the 


ON   MODERN  UTOPIAS  339 

universe,  will  diminish  the  universe's  wastefulness. 
Quickly,  say  you,  with  your  incomparable  romancing 
ingenuity  and  intolerant  novelist's  sympathy ;  slowly, 
says  your  brother-thinker,  Gabriel  Tarde,  with  his 
historian's  and  economist's  belief  in  strata  of  civilisa- 
tion, in  slow  permeation  or  levelling  up.  But,  quicker 
or  slower,  this  automatic  progress  requires  time ;  and 
it  is  time  which  you,  in  your  "  Modern  Utopia,"  have 
suddenly  taken  to  grudge.  In  thinking  over  the 
betterment  which  must  come,  you  have  (at  least  it 
seems  to  me)  lost  patience  with  the  evil,  the  folly,  and 
wastefulness  under  your  eyes ;  and  you  have  set 
to  planning  a  royal  road,  to  framing  some  device  by 
which  (as  in  some  Monte  Carlo  "  system  ")  there  will 
be  all,  or  very  nearly  all,  gain,  and  no  loss  to  speak 
of.  And  you  have  invented  a  Utopia  where  time  and 
experience  are  replaced  by  foresight  and  self-control  ; 
where  forces  for  good  shall  no  longer  run  to  waste, 
and  forces  for  evil  be  snuffed  out  by  deliberate  effort. 
There  is  already  in  the  world  an  amazing  amount  of 
knowledge,  of  disinterestedness  (at  least  as  far  as  money 
and  comfort  goes),  and  of  volition  :  let  this  be  con- 
sciously applied  to  future  improvement,  no  longer  left 
to  casual  work,  there  are  already  a  good  number 
(perhaps  there  have  always  been)  of  superior  men  and 
women  :  let  this  elite  direct  the  rest,  showing  its  fitness 
to  govern  others  by  its  fitness  to  govern  itself — and 
behold  !  we  have  your  Samurai,  your  voluntary  oli- 
garchy, your  noble  caste,  recruited  by  the  elimination 
of  all  baser  motives.  The  idea  is  so  good  that  it  is 
not  new  :  the  Pythagoreans,  I  am  told,  were  people 
of  this  kind  ;  the  Jesuits,  who  did  such  wonders  in 


340  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

Paraguay,  were  men  whose  individual  passions  had 
been  deviated  and  canalised  ad  majorem  Dei  Gloriam, 
although  the  God  and  the  Glory  were  sometimes  queer. 
And  to  me,  who  am,  after  all,  but  a  poor  aesthete  in 
moralist's  garb,  there  is  about  the  whole  thing  a 
pleasant  reminiscence  of  Mozartian  choruses  in  the 
Zauberflote,  of  a  venerable,  deep-voiced  Sarastro,  clad 
in  white  and  singing  eighteenth-century  humanitarian- 
ism.  The  attractiveness  of  the  notion,  and  its  perpetual 
recurrence  in  some  shape  or  other,  suggests  that  there 
may  be  truth  at  the  bottom  of  it ;  at  all  events,  that, 
by  constant  reverting  to  some  such  arrangement,  man- 
kind may  eventually  make  it  possible. 

Eventually ',  but  only  eventually.  For,  and  here  one 
of  my  vague  dissentient  currents  of  thought  finds  a 
channel  of  expression,  it  seems  to  me  that  such  a 
system  of  government  by  the  wise  and  good  is  rather 
the  result  of  the  world's  greater  wisdom  and  goodness 
than  its  probable  cause.  Apart  from  such  oligarchies 
of  persons  specially  fit  for  military  or  statesmanly 
functions  (but  otherwise  indifferent  poor  enough),  like 
Sparta,  or  Venice,  or  the  House  of  Lords  at  an  un- 
known historical  period,  I  can  imagine  such  govern- 
ment by  the  Wise  and  Virtuous  only  in  moments  of 
emergency  and  crisis.  In  the  very  suggestive  little 
Utopian  novel,  "  Histoire  de  Quatre  Ans,"  by  my 
friend  Daniel  Halevy,  for  instance,  the  austere  elite  of 
men  of  science  take  the  entire  management  of  the 
human  cattle  remaining  on  earth,  and  even  break  and 
breed  them,  so  to  speak,  for  the  plough.  But  this  is 
after  the  collapse  of  society  through  the  over-sudden 
introduction  of  virtually  gratuitous  chemical  food  and 


ON   MODERN  UTOPIAS  341 

consequent  leisure,  and  a  fine  bout  of  mysterious 
pestilences  which  has  purged  the  earth  more  effectually 
than  Robespierre  even  could  have  done  with  purifying 
guillotines.  And  my  friend  Daniel  Halevy  does  not 
say  how  the  human  cattle  and  their  high-minded 
farmers  got  on  in  the  long  run  ;  nay,  he  even  ends  his 
tantalising  story  with  an  incursion  of  Tartars  and  a 
return  of  that  "  Great  Corrector  of  Monstrous  Times, 
Shaker  of  o'er-rank  States,  and  Grand  Decider  of 
Dusty  and  Old  Titles,"  the  "  Mars  Armipotent "  of 
splendid  Fletcher's  verse.  And  M.  Renan,  while  (in 
his  pessimist  moment  of  the  "  Dialogues  Philoso- 
phiques  ")  furnishing  a  singularly  terrible  scheme  of 
a  world  given  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  a  scientific 
dlite,  has  (like  the  charming,  inconsistent,  human,  sly 
moralist  he  was)  warned  us  in  several  other  places 
against  such  oligarchies ;  indeed,  made  it  quite  clear 
that,  brute  though  Caliban  often  is,  it  is  safer  to  leave 
the  world  to  him  than  to  the  austere  and  philanthropic 
Prospero. 

It  might  be  possible  perhaps,  with  time  (of  which, 
however,  you  are  very  chary  !)  to  guard  against  the 
unpleasantness  of  your  Samurai  Regime,  particularly  by 
encouraging  your  other  class  of  erratic  (and  I  fear 
rather  rowdy)  creative  geniuses.  It  might  even  (and 
to  this  I  should  propose  devoting  a  little  of  our  energy) 
become  possible  to  diminish  the  trickiness  and  one- 
sidedness  of  superior  people's  individual  constitution, 
and  their  tendency  to  rough-and-ready  logic.  But 
even  if  you  get  perfect  disinterested  thoughtfulness 
from  a  minority,  do  you  really  believe  this  disinterested 
thoughtfulness,  immaculate,  sound,  but  fitful,  sporadic, 


342  ON   MODERN  UTOPIAS 

and  tentative,  could  build  a  world  of  virtue  and  wisdom 
out  of  the  shoddy  resolves,  the  sham  comprehension, 
the  genuine  small  self-seekingness  and  shirking  of  the 
majority  ? 

Why,  we  have  not  yet  got  the  better  of  what  is 
tricky  and  trashy  in  the  individual  saint  or  genius  ; 
and,  as  to  disciples,  every  reformer  has  seen  (or  rather 
been  too  purblind  to  see)  his  teachings  misunderstood 
or  misapplied  or  turned  into  dead  letter  by  those  he 
trusted  most.  Did  not  the  Apostles,  under  the  eye 
of  the  Master,  begin  quarrelling  for  precedence? 

The  Samurai,  therefore,  may  organise  statistics  and 
laboratories,  but  I  doubt  whether  they  will  do  much 
effective  organisation  of  mankind  at  large.  I  venture, 
indeed,  to  think  that  their  real  use  will  be  to  organise 
themselves,  I  might  almost  say,  each  to  organise  himself 
and  herself.  Good,  wise,  and  responsible  people  are 
never  good,  wise,  or  responsible  enough  or  in  the  right 
directions  and  moments  ;  and  it  will  be  a  great  gain  to 
all  progress  if  they  be,  personally  and  collectively,  up 
to  the  mark,  a  thoroughly  efficient  moral  and  intel- 
lectual vanguard.  It  will  be  a  gain  if  virtue  and 
wisdom  cease  to  be  a  positive  nuisance.  Let  the 
Samurai  educate  and  organise  themselves  and  not 
others  ;  if  their  systems  of  morals  and  education,  their 
new  scruples  and  new  duties,  their  new  ideals  and 
dignities  and  pleasures,  are  really  good  for  anything, 
why,  then,  this  better  born  and  better  bred  class  will 
gradually  be  imitated  by  their  inferiors  ;  the  world 
will  rot  a  little  less  for  their  presence.  They  are  the 
salt  of  the  earth  ;  let  them  see  to  not  losing  their 
savour  ! 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  343 

To  do  this  will  give  them  work  enough,  to  breed 
and  educate  their  own  children  ;  nay,  one  might  almost 
say,  to  breed  and  educate  their  own  individual  thoughts 
and  desires. 

I  am  gradually  working  my  way  through  that  con- 
fusion of  enthusiastic  assent  and  ill-defined  suspicion 
with  which  your  "  Modern  Utopia "  has  filled  me. 
And  now  I  find  that  while  wishing  with  all  my  heart 
for  your  well  organised  republic,  while  longing  to 
become  a  knightly  priest  of  progress,  while  hankering 
even  for  a  little  sound  persecution  of  literary  fops  like 
your  Bare-legged  Nature-worshipper  and  your  Senti- 
mental Philistine  with  his  Lady  and  his  Dear  Doggie  ; 
while  at  all  events  accepting  your  religion  of  respon- 
sibility and  foresight  as  the  one  my  soul  has  ever 
yearned  for  ;  while  .  .  .  well,  while  all  this  has  been 
going  on,  something  has  murmured  in  my  innermost 
ear,  "  Beware  of  a  new  perfunctory  ritual,  a  new 
hypocrisy,  a  new  intolerance  ;  beware  of  a  new  super- 
stition  " 

For  this  perpetual  reaching  out  to  the  Future  is  a 
violation  of  Reality.  Mankind  has  not  bothered  much 
about  the  Future  because  it  has  had  its  hands  full  with 
the  Present.  And  mankind — such,  at  least,  is  my 
crass  instinctive  philosophy — mankind  has  been  right. 
And  what  is  more,  you,  dear  Mr.  Wells,  know  this  far 
better  than  I,  and  have  shown  it  with  passionate  pathos 
and  humour  in  "  Mr.  Lewisham  "  and  "  Kipps  "  ;  and 
it  is  only  when  you  sit  down  to  systematise  and 
specialise  the  Future  that  you  forget  this  living  know- 
ledge, as  specialists  and  system- makers  always  forget 
all  save  the  speciality  and  the  system.  The  metaphysics 


344  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

of  your  worship  of  the  Future  are,  I  venture  to  say, 
wrong,  as  wrong  as  those  of  any  other  priest  preaching 
of  any  other  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

Life  is  not  a  single-aimed  effort  towards  continuance 
and  development,  towards  becoming  somebody  or 
something  different.  Seen  through  the  scheme  of 
the  historian  or  biologist,  its  facts  grouped  and 
accentuated  into  his  special  intellectual  pattern,  life 
is  a  ceaseless  becoming.  But  looked  at,  or  rather  felt, 
in  a  different  way,  life  takes  the  signification  of  a 
ceaseless  being;  and  as  a  being,  not  a  becoming,  does 
life  affect  the  real  creature  and  constitute  real  expe- 
rience. Life  (even  the  life  of  those  Patriarchs  who 
did  nothing  but  be  begotten  and  beget)  is  not  merely 
procreation,  but  endurance ;  and  if  each  individual 
were  not  busy  making  his  own  few  years,  nay,  his  own 
hour  and  minute,  tolerable,  the  Race,  for  all  its  meta- 
phorical powers  of  survival,  would  have  died  out  a 
good  while  ago  ;  nor  would  there  be  much  talk  of  a 
future  (on  earth  or  off  it)  if  there  were  not  a  most 
imperious  present,  full  of  ease  and  distress. 

Even  as  theologians  inventoried  life  according  to 
the  requirements  of  a  day  of  judgment,  so,  particularly 
since  Schopenhauer  and  Darwin,  philosophers  have 
taken  in  account  only  the  qualities  which,  because 
they  are  useful,  are  perpetuated ;  and  have  denied 
utility  to  those  which  are  not  perpetual.  Philosophers 
have  fixed  their  eyes  on  the  Will-to-Continue,  belong- 
ing to  that  abstraction,  the  Race  ;  and  have  neglected 
the  Will-not-to-Suffer,  belonging  to  the  individual  ; 
a  Will  quite  as  important  and  a  good  deal  more 
ascertainable. 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  345 

For  would  there  have  been  any  human  or  animal 
action  at  all,  any  thought,  any  volition,  any  effort,  any 
food,  or  any  love,  but  for  the  fact  of  individual 
pain,  discomfort,  distress,  and  its  poor  younger  sister, 
individual  satisfaction  ?  Would  you,  dear  Mr.  Wells, 
and  your  Samurai  and  New-Republicans •,  and  your 
humble  admirer  myself — nay,  a  great  many  remarkable 
persons,  saints,  sages,  John-a-Dreamses  and  Torque- 
madas  of  various  ages  and  conditions — have  all  been 
busy  with  Utopias  and  Paradises  and  Hells,  but  for 
the  pressure  of  that  same  Will-not-to-SufFer  ;  but  for 
the  preferences,  intellectual  and  sentimental  yet  organic, 
vicarious  yet  personal  and  present,  of  our  own  rather 
odd  individuality,  and  sometimes  rather  to  the  incon- 
venience of  our  neighbours  !  Our  neighbours,  mean- 
while, not  saints  nor  sages,  nor  poets  nor  heroes,  but 
just  the  normal  philistines  beloved  of  Dr.  Nordau, 
have  (as  before  remarked)  furthered  and  hampered 
progress  by  their  less  peculiar  attempts  at  making  the 
present  tolerable.  All  mankind,  superior  or  inferior, 
has  been  busy  keeping  itself  alive  by  material  and 
metaphorical  food  and  rest,  and  also  by  narcotics  and 
stimulants.  This  latter  fact  has  been  a  little  blinked 
by  utilitarians  and  moralists,  so  I  wish  to  insist  on  it  : 
yes,  the  human  race  might  have  come  to  an  end  but 
for  satisfactions  and  alleviations  which  have  sometimes 
cost  degradation  and  disease  and  an  increase  of  misery 
to  themselves  and  their  progeny.  The  excitement  and 
the  dreams  of  cruelty  and  superstition  have  helped  to 
keep  the  race  (because  the  individual)  going,  even  like 
the  excitement  and  dreams  of  alcohol  and  opium. 
And  the  world  would  be  depopulate  but  for  the  fact 


346  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

that  human  creatures  have  not  merely  begotten  others, 
but  kept  their  own  vital  hopes  alive,  thanks  to  the 
Gods'  wholesale  intoxicant  called  Love.  You,  dear 
Mr.  Wells,  with  your  Lewishams  and  Kippses,  have 
brought  home  to  your  readers  that  those  lovers,  sheep- 
ishly ecstatic  among  the  music-filled  or  moonlit  bowers 
of,  say,  Folkestone  Leas,  are  re-tempering  their  own 
soul,  quite  as  much  as  replenishing  the  earth,  in  the 
one  sort  of  poetry  open  to  shopmen  and  housemaids, 
even  as  did  the  cave  and  lake  dwellers,  their  ancestors. 
Indeed,  you  novelists  may  bring  home  to  psychologists 
and  sociologists  and  other  rather  dreary  persons  this 
great  neglected  cosmic  fact :  that  human  development 
depends  not  only  on  the  warning  power  of  pain,  but 
on  the  restorative  power  of  pleasure. 

Now,  thinking  about  Utopias  and  arranging  for  them 
is  the  born  Samurai's  pleasure,  as  similar  thinking  of 
God  and  Heaven  and  living  for  these  has  been  the 
pleasure  of  the  Saint. 

Perhaps  the  most  useful  function  of  all  religions  (as 
distinguished  from  mere  codes  of  conduct  which  have 
employed  religious  sanctions)  has  been  thus  to  keep 
alive  a  certain  number  of  religious  people,  who,  but 
for  the  exhilaration  of  communion  with  a  divinity  and 
the  corroborating  peacefulness  of  a  communion  with 
fellow-worshippers,  would  have  died  for  sheer  misery 
and  forlornness.  Now,  religious  people  have  been, 
and  are,  a  necessary  factor  in  all  progress,  and  only 
the  more  necessary  for  their  scarcity. 

Saintliness  and  heroism  have  perhaps  done  little 
direct  good,  perhaps  done  harm,  practically  and  in  the 
way  they  meant  it ;  they  have  not  been,  most  likely, 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  347 

half  as  fruitful  of  useful  action  as  the  selfish  and 
thoughtless  self-seekingness  of  grosser  folk.  But  they 
have  corrected,  pruned,  and  lopped  the  instincts  of  life 
which  otherwise  ran  to  seed  of  death.  There  is  more 
than  an  allegoric  significance  in  chastity  being  the 
saintly  quality  above  all  others  ;  since  chastity,  in  itself 
sterile,  keeps  the  young  brood,  the  quickening  germ, 
from  neglect,  from  devastation  and  death.  A  certain 
number  must  preach  and  live  for  altruism,  not  because 
altruism  is  a  principle  of  life,  but  because  the  egoistic 
life-principles  are  too  riotous  and  self-destructive. 
And  as  with  thought  of  one's  neighbour,  so  also  with 
thought  of  that  neighbour-in-time,  the  Future.  The 
Future  can  exist  only  in  the  thought  and  feeling  of  the 
Present,  as  the  Neighbour  (in  so  far  as  Neighbour,  as 
ALTER)  exists  only  in  the  thought  and  feeling  of  the 
Ego.  Both  are  necessary  mitigations  of  the  actually 
existent,  of  the  imperious  now  and  the  imperious  self ; 
and  both  impose  qualifications,  sometimes  prohibitions, 
on  instincts  and  actions  stronger,  more  vital  and  neces- 
sary, than  themselves  :  "  Not  thus  " — "  Not  so  much" 
— "  Not  this  at  all."  The  thought  of  a  neighbour  is 
to  make  some  self  less  miserable  ;  the  thought  of  a 
future  is  to  reclaim  a  possible  present.  And  little  by 
little,  as  the  present  becomes  richer  and  the  ego  more 
complex,  there  will  enter  into  the  present  more  and  more 
strands  of  the  future  ;  and  the  ease  and  discomfort  of 
the  self  will  be  shot  and  veined  more  and  more  subtly 
and  indissolubly  with  the  ease  and  discomfort  of  the 
neighbour.  The  dreams  of  the  dreamers  will  slowly 
become  reality.  The  chaste,  sometimes  sterile,  saints 
will  have  bequeathed  their  features  to  the  offspring  of 


348  ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS 

the  teeming,  the  forgotten  fleshly  generations ;  and 
that  mystery  will  happen  to  which  Renan  has  secretly 
and  fearfully  alluded  :  the  Divinity  will  have  been 
born  of  the  prayers  of  its  worshippers. 

In  that  Kingdom  of  Heaven  there  will  be  no  saints  ; 
in  the  realised  Utopia  no  Samurai ;  for  saints  imply 
sinners  and  Samurai  imply  uninitiate.  But  meanwhile 
— and  I  return  to  my  worship  of  the  Present — there 
has  to  be  a  definite  worship  of  the  Future.  There  are 
Samurai  (with  recognition  in  eyes  and  voice  rather 
than  in  garb)  needed  to  prevent  progress  being  too 
perpetually  wasted,  but  not,  methinks,  to  organise  it ; 
tender-hearted  Samurai  physicians  to  check  the  birth 
of  the  unfit  rather  than  to  breed  supermen  on  Mr. 
Shaw's  principles  ;  sceptical  Samurai  moralists  less  to 
say  "  believe  "  and  "  obey  "  than  to  ask  "  are  you  quite 
sure  ?"  and  "try  for  yourself."  And  such  Samurai,  in 
their  serene  but  sometimes  arduous  and  solitary  efforts 
at  (forgive  what  seems  an  anti-climax  !)  humbugging 
themselves  and  others  as  little  as  possible,  will  require 
a  religion  to  keep  them  alive,  a  dreamed-of  future  to 
console  them  for  the  present.  They  will  require  a 
book  like  your  adventures  in  the  Twin-Planet  beyond 
Sirius  as  an  aid  to  devotion,  a  latter-day  u  Pilgrim's 
Progress." 

I  am  aware,  as  I  write  these  lines,  that  there  is  an 
air  of  obscurantism  about  them.  I  confess  to  a  super- 
stition in  favour  of  the  secret  and  ironical  ways  of 
the  Universe,  and  a  perhaps  mean-spirited  fear  of 
human  pre-arrangement  of  all  things  ;  deeming,  as 
I  do,  that  our  intellect,  though  vast,  cannot  yet 
compass  the  Multitudinous  Unexpected  ;  and  that 


ON   MODERN   UTOPIAS  349 

what  little  intelligence  and  sympathy  and  will  we 
possess  is  barely  sufficient  for  everyday  use  and  every 
day's  unaccountable  surprises. 

Thoroughly  earnest  and  strenuous  people  may 
stigmatise  this  attitude  as  dilettanteish ;  and  I  have 
a  notion  that  they  do  not  really  like  me.  But  I 
feel  sure,  dear  Mr.  Wells,  that  you  will  protect  me 
against  your  Samurai  and  their  presumable  Index 
Expurgatorius  ;  nay,  that  you  will  pull  a  few  wires, 
in  order  that  the  revised  edition  of  the  New  Republican 
Breviary  should  contain  some  little  high-minded 
quotation  from  this  over-garrulous  letter  of  your 
devoted  and  grateful  reader. 


A  POSTSCRIPT  ABOUT  MR.  WELLS 


A  POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 


I  HAD  intended  the  postscript  should  be  about 
this  book  of  mine,  putting  a  thread  of  connection 
through  these  essays,  and  telling  the  reader,  or  at 
least  the  Reviewer,  what  it  is  all  about.  There  were 
several  things  to  explain,  the  title  for  instance,  and 
what  was  meant  by  gospels  and  what  was  meant  by 
anarchy.  Such  postscripts  (and  similar  prefaces)  are 
amusing  enough  to  write,  if  not  to  read ;  with  some 
of  charm  there  must  have  been  in  the  old-fashioned 
masked  ball,  where  bona  fide  explanations  were  taken 
for  mystifications  and  vice  versa.  Moreover,  after 
a  volume-full  of  studies  of  other  people's  philosophy, 
one  feels  inclined  to  air  one's  own  a  little,  and 
talk  about  oneself.  This  postscript  therefore  was 
to  have  been  about  my  own  book,  and  not  at 
all  about  that  letter  to  Mr.  Wells.  And  now 
instead.  .  .  . 

For  Mr.  Wells  possesses  the  intolerable  power  (the 
more  intolerable  that  I  enjoy  the  abuse  of  it)  of 
setting  me  off  thinking  anew  when  I  have  shaken 
down  comfortably  among  my  own  ideas  and  do  not 

23  353 


354      A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

want  to  hear  any  more  of  his.  Thus,  since  printing 
that  letter  (in  the  Fortnightly  Review)  which  was 
to  have  settled  Mr.  Wells  and  Utopias  for  good  and 
all,  so  far,  at  least,  as  concerned  myself,  I  have 
read  the  book  on  America,  and  am  once  more  per- 
plexed (and  delighted)  in  my  mind. 

Perplexed  on  various  points,  which  may  be  summed 
up  thus  :  Can  Mr.  Wells  be  right  and  I  be  wrong  ? 
Is  it  possible  that  my  obduracy  about  Samurai  and 
New  Republicans,  about  constructive  socialism  and 
the  deliberate  scheming  out  of  the  future,  briefly,  about 
the  acceleration  of  progress  by  intentional  effort,  can 
this,  my  hardened  incredulity,  be  the  result  merely  of 
.  .  .  well,  let  us  say  of  my  having  been  born  under 
the  sign  of  Laissez  Faire,  more  precisely  at  the  con- 
junction of  Herbert  Spencer  and  Buckle,  moreover, 
in  the  darkest  middle  of  the  dark  Nineteenth  Century  ? 
Otherwise  stated  :  is  there  really  a  change  abroad,  has 
the  new  century  ushered  in  new  relations  between 
Thought  and  Practice  which  we,  of  the  old  time, 
cannot  appreciate  or  even  see?  The  supposition  of 
being  in  the  wrong  is  always  annoying ;  and  the  worst 
of  the  matter  is  that  I  shall  never  know  whether  I 
am  or  not.  For  how  can  superannuated  thought  think 
itself  out  of  date  ?  So,  like  the  inquisitive  lover 
in  that  Tuscan  folksong,  I  should  like  to  die  (but 
Mr.  Wells  also)  a  little  temporary  death,  in  order  to 
see,  not  who  would  weep  and  who  would  laugh  over 
our  respective  biers  ;  but  which  of  us  two,  Mr.  Wells 
or  I,  is  going  to  be  regarded  as  the  more  delightfully 
quaint  by  retrospective  readers  of,  let  us  say,  the  year 
Two  Thousand. 


A    POSTSCRIPT  ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      355 

The  regrettable  imperfections  in  the  Automatic 
Futuroscope  and  the  "Phonograph  of  the  yet  Unspoken 
making  it  so  far  impossible  to  gratify  this  legitimate 
curiosity,  I  shall  try  and  cheat  my  impatience  by 
informing  Future  Ages  and  Mr.  Wells  what 
proposals  I  am  willing  to  make  for  the  benefit  of 
posterity,  and  what  improvements  nice  people  of 
to-day  might  really  attempt  with  a  view  to  making 
the  people  of  the  future  a  good  deal  nker  than  them- 
selves. And  in  so  doing  I  shall  be  explaining  the 
title  of  this  volume  of  essays,  and  what  I  mean  by 
gospels,  and  what  I  mean  by  anarchy. 


II 


No  longer  having  a  Personal  Divinity  to  whom  to 
devote  our  surplus  moral  energies,  we  many  of  us  want 
to  do  something  for  the  Future.  We  are  beginning 
to  substitute  for  the  Grace  before  meat  of  our  Fathers 
a  less  outspoken  and  less  regular,  but  only  the  more 
sincere  and  efficacious  little  silent  ceremony  of  thanks- 
giving whenever  we  become  aware  of  something 
fortunate  in  our  daily  life.  But  not  of  thanksgiving 
only  ;  there  is  a  spice  of  fear,  and,  in  consequence, 
a  desire  of  atonement  :  Has  not  someone  suffered 
in  the  production  of  this  excellent  food  for  body  or 
soul  ?  What  of  the  midnight  baker,  the  serf-plough- 
man ?  With  what  has  the  oven  been  heated,  and 
the  soil  (we  have  heard  of  blood  for  such  uses)  been 
manured  ?  The  thought  not  merely  of  the  present 
toil  and  want  underlying  our  leisure  and  luxury, 


356      A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

but  of  all  the  past  ruthlessness  of  law  and  custom 
which  has  brought  about  our  morality,  all  this  is 
apt  to  upset  the  balance  of  our  satisfaction  and  to 
cause  intermittent  or  steady  impulses  towards  bringing 
our  purer  will,  our  clearer  intelligence,  as  some  sort 
of  oblation.  The  evil  of  the  Past  shall  be  atoned  for 
by  the  Good  of  the  Future  !  And,  once  more,  we  are 
becoming  millenarians. 

In  this  feeling,  shared  with  all  religiously  minded 
rationalists  of  to-day,  Mr.  Wells  and  I  are  fraternally 
united.  We  both  of  us  believe  in  a  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  on  Earth.  The  difference  between  us  is,  that 
while  Mr.  Wells  would  set  Disinterested  Thinking  and 
Impersonal  Feeling  the  task  of  actively  and  positively 
bringing  about  this  millennium  ;  I  should  be  satis- 
fied with  preparing  such  thought  and  emotion  for 
service  against  the  coming  of  the  new  dispensation, 
and  my  wildest  hopes  would  be  exceeded  if  such 
thought  and  emotion  could  cease  to  be  a  stumbling- 
block  in  the  meantime. 

In  that  letter  of  mine  to  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  I 
expressed  my  conviction  that  what  small  amount 
of  civilisation  mankind  has  hitherto  achieved  is  due 
not  so  much  to  any  intellectual  and  moral  efforts,  as 
to  mankind's  uneasy  shifting  of  burdens  and  snatching 
at  solaces  ;  in  fact,  not  to  the  thought  of  the  future 
but  to  the  care  for  the  present  :  a  process  of  improve- 
ment unconscious  and  automatic  like  the  Universe's 
other  processes  ;  like  them  also  in  the  highest  degree 
wasteful  and  dilatory.  And  one  of  my  reasons  for 
this  belief  is  that  the  bulk  of  the  thinking  and  feeling 
intended  to  help  on  human  improvement  has  really 


A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      357 

not  been  good  enough  for  the  purpose.  Not  good 
enough  in  the  sense  of  not  sufficiently  impersonal  and 
disciplined. 

This  may  seem  odd,  because  the  unpracticality  of 
ninety-nine  hundredths  of  all  philosophical  and  religious 
thought  and  feeling  has  made  people  think  that  it  is  if 
anything  too  wise  and  too  noble.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  in  no  other  fields  of  human  activity  has 
unruly  impulse  raged  with  such  impunity.  For  con- 
sider :  in  all  practical  relations  of  life  the  Old  Adam 
of  one  man  is  kept  within  bounds  by  the  Old  Adam 
of  another  ;  and  is  checked  moreover  by  the  common 
consent  of  the  majority,  with  its  master  of  the 
ceremonies  or  policeman.  But  no  such  official  has  ever 
existed  with  regard  to  the  things  of  the  spirit.  People 
have  indeed  been  taught,  often  with  demonstrations  by 
the  Secular  Arm,  what  to  think  on  certain  questions  of 
metaphysics  and  mythology.  But  at  no  time  of  the 
world's  history  have  they  been  taught  how  to  think 
whatever  they  did  think  :  how  in  the  sense  of  with 
what  degree  of  self-assertion  and  self-contradiction,  of 
aggressiveness  or  equivocation.  Indeed,  the  lack  of 
discipline,  of  decorum,  nay  common  decency,  in  man- 
kind's carriage  of  their  own  thought,  may  be  due  in 
part  to  the  theological  habits  in  which,  through 
tradition  and  through  reaction,  most  thinkers  have  been 
brought  up.  There  is  a  saying  of  M.  Kenan's,  that 
the  conception  of  such  a  thing  as  abstract  truth  was 
fostered,  if  not  originated,  by  the  doctrinal  disputes  of 
early  Christianity.  And  this  seems  likely,  if  we  mean 
that  theology  encouraged  the  metaphysical  habit  of 
considering  truth  as  a  kind  of  entity  which]  a  man 


358      A   POSTSCRIPT  ABOUT  MR.   WELLS 

could  or  not  possess  and  reverence,  and  the  respectful 
possession  of  which  sacramental  entity  sent  a  man  to 
heaven,  instead  of  to  prison  and  to  hell.  We  are  so 
accustomed  to  this  attitude  as  not  to  perceive  the 
grotesqueness  of  an  individual  pretending,  or  believing 
himself,  to  be  not  a  human  being  who  has  learned  and 
unlearned  and  is  busy  thinking  out  some  question,  but 
an  oracle-mouth,  connected  telephonically  with  the 
Everlasting  Mysteries,  and  out  of  which  only  Truth 
can  be  muttered  or  bellowed  :  the  stoled  and  mitred 
We  of  the  Church,  surviving  dowdily  as  the  We  of  the 
Daily  Press.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  theological  habit  of 
taking  for  granted,  like  the  legendary  Master  of  Balliol, 
that  what  I  dont  know  isn't  knowledge  has  to  answer  for 
such  immodesty  and  violence  in  the  realms  of  thought 
(usually  described  as  serene]  as  would  have  otherwise 
been  impossible  from  individuals  who,  when  not  acting 
as  mouthpieces  of  eternal  verity,  were  perfectly  decent, 
modest  and  rational.  Religious  training  also,  with  its 
constant  commentary  on  the  prognostications  and 
anathemas  of  a  school  of  particularly  enigmatical  and 
vituperative  Hebrew  dervishes,  has  accidentally  accus- 
tomed us  to  endure  and  even  to  assume  the  prophetic 
attitude  ;  since,  when  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  the 
possession  of  exceptional  psychological  acumen,  of 
generous  purpose  and  of  splendid  expression,  is  not 
naturally  and  necessarily  allied  with  the  intellectual  bad 
manners  and  uproariousness  indulged  in  with  impunity 
by  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  Tolstoi  and  Nietzsche.  While, 
on  the  other  hand,  theological  disputations,  those 
wonderful  jousts  of  syllogisms  with  which  Abelard  or 
St.  Bernard  seem  to  have  starred  it  through  all  the 


A    POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      359 

capitals  of  Christendom,  have  left  behind  a  tendency 
towards  using  argument  not  as  a  tool  for  sorting  facts, 
but  rather  as  a  weapon  for  cleaving  the  skull  of  an 
adversary  ;  thus  grafting  some  of  the  prize-fighter's 
brutality  on  to  the  more  delicate  and  amiable  acrobatic 
tricks  of  thought  handed  down  by  the  sophists  of 
antiquity. 


Ill 


And  here  I  see  an  opportunity  of  doing  what,  after 
all,  I  ought  to  do,  namely,  say  a  word  or  two  about  my 
own  book  and  its  title  and  sub-title.  For  this  volume 
appears  to  be,  more  than  anything  else,  an  unintended 
exposure  of  such  intellectual  disorder  as  we  have  just 
been  discussing.  Unintended  ;  since  these  essays  are 
in  the  most  literal  sense  marginalia,  mere  puttings  into 
shape  of  the  notes  taken,  often  with  a  pencil  on  the 
poor  defaced  books  themselves,  in  the  course  of  my 
readings  ;  and  the  title,  "  Gospels  of  Anarchy,"  has  been 
extended  from  the  initial  essay  to  the  whole  volume 
because  the  connecting  thread  throughout  it  all  appears 
to  be  my  effort  to  extract  some  kind  of  order  from  the 
anarchy  of  the  authors  under  consideration.  In  every 
case,  even  that  of  the  novelists,  my  marginal  notes 
reveal  the  need  of  saving  that  part  of  my  teachers' 
teachings  which  I  could  subscribe  to  from  the  mass  of 
illogical  orexaggerated  notions  in  which  it  is  embedded. 
The  professed  anarchists  under  examination,  Stirner, 
Ibsen,  Whitman,  Brewster,  and  Barres,  nay  (I  am  sorry 
to  have  to  tell  him  so  !)  Bernard  Shaw,  are  by  no 
means  more  subversive,  in  their  most  intentional  sub- 


360      A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

versiveness,  than  the  other  apostles  who  did  not  dream 
of  preaching  or  practising  intellectual  anarchy.  On 
the  contrary,  one  might  almost  say  that  the  disorder, 
the  passionate  unruliness,  the  blind  following  of 
individual  impulse,  the  derision  of  what  other  men 
have  thought,  the  setting  at  defiance  of  the  modes 
according  to  which  all  mankind  has  learned  to  think, 
the  intellectual  anarchy,  in  short,  is  greatest  among 
upholders  of  old  religious  dogmas  or  ethics,  and  the 
framers  of  carefully  thought-out  systems.  For  let  me 
explain  once  more  what  I  mean  by  intellectual  anarchy. 
It  does  not  imply  revolt  from  the  creed  in  which  a 
man  has  been  brought  up  :  Ruskin,  for  a  good  half  of 
his  life,  was  intellectually  lawless  precisely  because  he 
tried  to  explain  aesthetic  and  moral  phenomena  by  the 
theological  notions  of  the  past  :  it  is  disorderly  to 
connect  the  political  fall  of  Venice  with  Palladian 
architecture,  and  the  inferiority  of  the  later  Scaliger 
tombs  with  the  vices  of  despots.  It  is  disorderly, 
when  a  man  has  emerged  as  far  as  Ruskin  in  his  later 
and  socialistic  writings,  still  to  continue  thinking  in 
terms  of  Original  Sin.  Even  at  the  time  of  "  Fors," 
Ruskin  was  haunted  by  the  notion  of  a  devil,  however 
metaphorical,  lurking  in  our  paths,  of  Evil,  with  a 
capital  E,  poisoning  the  well-heads  of  all  the  holiest 
things.  Ruskin  ceased  to  believe  in  Christian  dogma  ; 
but  he  retained  the  theological  habit  of  contempt  and 
condemnation  which,  with  its  artificial  raising  of  the 
judge  over  the  judged,  brings  with  it  so  much  moral 
perversion  and  cruelty,  so  much  intellectual  crooked- 
ness and  refusal  to  see.  And  these  things  also  are 
disorder  in  the  spiritual  realm  ;  disorder  none  the  less 


A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      361 

real  because  it  is  the  disorder  inherited  from  an  over- 
conservative  Past,  as  distinguished  from  the  disorder 
threatened  (like  that  of  professed  anarchists)  by  an 
impatient  Future. 

Similarly  it  is  disorder  in  the  kingdom  of  the  spirit 
when  one  of  the  noblest  and  most  lucid  of  thinkers, 
the  incomparable  Nietzsche,  allows  himself,  and  is 
allowed  by  his  disciples,  to  display  in  his  years  pf 
saneness  the  terrible  taint  of  approaching  insanity.  It 
is  disorder  equally  when  a  man  capable  of  being  a 
physician  of  the  soul's  diseases  like  Nordau,  permits 
himself,  and  is  permitted,  to  diagnose  a  whole  century's 
worth  of  art  and  literature  as  the  production  of  various 
kinds  of  mania.  Disorder  that  one  of  the  most 
unflinching  discoverers  of  social  untruth,  Tolstoi, 
condemns  not  one  century's  art,  but  nearly  all  the  art 
of  all  the  ages,  because  it  does  not  point  the  moral  like 
"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  And — if  I  may  re-state  my 
perhaps  audacious  opinion — when  an  illustrious  psycho- 
logist like  William  James  preaches  the  Will  to  believe, 
there  is  not  merely  disorder  postulated  in  the  dislocated 
universe,  but  disorder  actually  present  in  the  little 
world  of  writers  and  of  readers.  I  have  emphasised,  in 
my  previous  sentence,  the  words  "  allowed  "  and  "  per- 
mitted." For  part  of  our  habitual  intellectual  anarchy 
consists  in  the  fact  that  instead  of  mitigating  and 
checking  the  extravagances  to  which  solitary  irresponsi- 
bility may  lead  a  thinker,  disciples  and  adversaries  must 
really  be  charged  with  the  worst  of  them.  For 
disciples  do  not  become  disciples  at  all  unless  you 
furnish  them  with  something  wherewith  to  startle  the 
neighbourhood  and  annoy  their  elders  ;  they  insist  on 


362       A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

your  knowing  your  own  mind  to  the  extent  of  leaving 
no  mind  worth  knowing  ;  and  they  thus  arrest  the 
natural  process  by  which  a  thinker  drops  some  of  his 
own  mistakes  and  picks  up  some  of  the  truths  of 
his  rivals  :  like  nothing  so  much  in  their  action  as 
those  parasites  whose  presence  in  the  body  determines 
ossification  of  the  tissues,  premature  senility,  and  a 
tendency  to  paralysis  or  to  mania.  Should  this  seem 
the  sour-grapes  of  a  writer  chiefly  notable  for  never 
having  had  a  disciple,  let  the  reader  rummage  in  his 
memory  for  any  case  of  a  wise  man  being  brought  to 
book  by  a  modest  "  Aren't  you  exaggerating,  O 
Master  ? " — No  :  the  chorus  of  disciples  is  always 

ready  with  its  "Assuredly,  O  Socrates " 

The  adversaries,  on  the  other  hand,  misunderstand- 
ing and  misrepresenting,  merely  exasperate  the  Sage  or 
Prophet  into  caricaturing  his  own  ideas  in  order  to 
oppose  theirs.  Nor  are  the  criticising  adversaries  the 
worst  :  your  original  thinker  is  usually  exasperated 
into  absurdity  by  the  fact  of  criticising  some  one  else, 
indeed,  of  recognising  the  existence  of  any  tendency  or 
views  contrary  to  his  own,  even  if  they  have  been  there 
for  centuries,  or  rather  particularly  if  such  is  the  case. 
Thus,  the  fact  that  Christ's  preachings  of  mansuetude 
had  had  a  considerable  audience,  was,  from  the  practical 
standpoint,  an  indication  that  there  is  something  to  be 
said  for  Christian  virtues  and  even  a  place  for  them  in 
the  economy  of  the  reasonable  and  self-respecting  soul. 
But  to  Nietzsche  (who  in  such  things  was  not  more  of 
a  maniac  than  many  other  great  thinkers)  this  popula- 
rity of  Christian  ethics  was  a  clear  proof  that  they  were 
unsuitable  to  the  Super-Man  ;  and  so,  quick,  hand  me 


A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      363 

the  hammer  of  Zarathustra  to  smash  them  all  in 
smithereens  ! 

Of  course,  it  must  be  said  that  the  Founder  of 
Christianity  had  in  his  time  laid  about  him  pretty 
freely  against  Pharisees  and  Scribes  ;  and  had  exacted 
rather  much  from  the  rich  young  man  who  was  willing 
to  sell  part  of  his  estate  ;  in  fact  so  much  that  the 
young  man  seems  to  have  decided  to  sell  none  at  all. 
And,  in  those  sacred  steps  of  moral  exaggeration, 
Tolstoi  has  surely  made  up  for  Nietzsche's  Egoism  by 
condemning  smoking  and  bicycling  and  scented  soap  as 
incompatible  with  love  of  one's  neighbour.  .  .  .  Thus, 
taken  as  a  class,  moralists  and  religious  teachers  of  all 
times  have  asked  too  much  to  obtain  anything  save 
dead-letter  and  reaction  ;  apostolic  and  Franciscan  and 
Puritan  Christianity  on  the  one  hand,  and  all  the 
various  Stoical  and  Rousseau-ish  Reason  and  Nature 
Worships,  on  the  other,  showing  us  the  bankruptcy  of 
all  such  high-flown  unpracticality.  While  as  to  the 
various  doctrines  erecting  the  Ego  as  the  centre  of  all 
things  and  inculcating,  like  that  of  M.  Barres  in  his  pre- 
Nationalist  days,  the  cultivation  of  the  Mot,  their  only 
recommendation  is  that  they  should  have  ended  off 
in  the  delightful  comedies  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 

There  remain  to  be  considered  those  philosophers 
who,  leaving  morals  alone,  have  undertaken  to  furnish 
mankind  with  the  necessary  amount  of  abstract  Truth, 
and  to  train  it  to  clear  and  honest  thought.  This 
object  has  been  sought  chiefly  by  building  symmetrical 
systems  on  the  sites  previously  occupied  by  their 
rivals'  gazebos,  or  out  of  the  discarded  materials  of 
some  crumbled  edifice  of  belief ;  so  that  any  durable 


364      A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

result  has  usually  been  accidental,  or  at  least  incidental, 
A  very  remarkable  book  I  have  lately  been  reading,  the 
"  English  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  "  of 
my  old  friend  Mr.  A.  W.  Benn,  has  left  me  with  an 
overpowering  impression  that  the  most  useful  work  of 
modern  philosophy  (a  work,  as  the  Education  Bill 
shows,  very  far  from  completed  !)  has  been  the  slow 
and  arduous  casting  away  of  a  portion  of  the  Philosophy 
of  Antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages  under  the  name  of 
Established  Religion,  together  with  some  picturesque 
remnants,  accidentally  mixed  up  with  it,  of  even  more 
venerable,  indeed  pre-historic,  rites  and  regulations 
concerning  sacrifices,  fetishes  and  totems.  Moreover, 
this  indispensable  piece  of  work,  besides  being  merely 
negative  and  destructive,  has  been  carried  on  mainly  in 
that  same  unintentional,  automatic  manner  in  which  the 
other  steps  of  human  progress  have  been  secured  : 
metaphysicians  and  divines  having  attacked  one  another 
from  sheer  self-assertion,  self-interest  and  pugnacity  y 
and  a  certain  amount  of  error  having  luckily  been  torn 
down  and  trampled  in  these  blind  and  undisciplined 
scuffles.  But  neither  religion  nor  philosophy  are  really 
to  thank  for  this  incidental  good  result  ;  and  neither 
has  shown  any  compunction  for  other  incidental  results 
of  a  less  profitable  kind,  of  which  loss  of  time  and 
littering  the  human  mind  with  refuse  are  among  the 
least. 

I  am  aware  that  all  the  various  exaggerations  and 
errors  compensate  and  neutralise  one  another  in  due 
course.  But  it  seems  an  unwise  arrangement  that 
wisdom  and  virtue,  of  all  things,  should  employ  half 
of  their  day  in  clearing  away  the  follies  of  previous 


A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      365 

wisdom  and  virtue,  and  the  other  half  in  devising  new 
follies  of  their  own.  In  my  marginal  notes  on  Tolstoi 
I  have  adverted  to  the  successive  idol-makings  and  idol- 
burnings  of  which  the  history  of  thought  chiefly 
consists.  And  in  those  on  Nordau's  "  Degeneracy  "  I 
have  tried  to  show  how  alternations  of  being  persecuted 
and  persecuting  explain  the  lapses  and  ravings  of  great 
men,  without  our  needing  to  classify  genius  with 
epilepsy  or  to  fall  foul  of  the  obscure  ancestors  of 
illustrious  persons.  And  the  dominant  note  of  this 
volume  of  essays  is  the  dreary  sense  that  initiation  into 
the  wisdom  of  the  sages  and  prophets  should  consist 
mainly  in  wading  through  the  rubbish  in  which  that 
wisdom  lies  overwhelmed  ;  and  in  carrying,  by  a  weary- 
ing effort,  one's  willingness  to  learn  and  to  respect 
through  that  pandemonium  of  self-assertion  and 
anathema. 

And  this  is  what  I  was  thinking  of  when  I  began  by 
saying  that  abstract  thought  and  ideal  emotions,  while 
imagining  themselves  too  good  for  practical  application, 
have  in  reality  not  been  honest,  and  disciplined  and 
responsible  and  unselfish  enough  for  use. 


IV 


I  can  imagine  a  crass  and  worldly  person  remarking 
that  where  it  is  a  question  of  daily  bread,  or  of  material 
convenience,  progress,  though  slow  (and  Mr.  Wells  has 
told  us  how  slow  ! ),  is  not  carried  on  exclusively  upon 
these  lines.  And  that  the  prevalence  of  such  dis- 
orderly habits  in  certain  departments  of  human  activity 


366      A  POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.  WELLS 

proves  that  those  departments,  to  wit,  philosophy, 
ethics  and  every  kind  of  religion,  are  quite  separate 
from  the  real  life  of  mankind  and  have  interest  only  for 
the  persons  who  cultivate  them  in  so  eccentric  and  fruit- 
less a  fashion.  M.  Kenan's  paternal  criticism  on  the 
symbolist  poets  might  be  applied,  alas,  to  the  philo- 
sophers and  moralists  of  whom  he  is  himself  the 
most  sceptically  amiable  :  "  Ce  sont  des  enfants  qui 
s'amusent."  Sages  and  prophets  and  saints,  whether 
masters  or  disciples,  would  thus  seem  to  have  been 
venting  their  surplus  energy  according  to  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer's  formula  of  the  Play  Instinct ;  and  practical 
persons  are  aware  that  the  play  instinct  leads,  when  to 
no  worse,  to  sand  castles,  soap  bubbles  and  mud  pies. 
This  is  the  tacit  opinion  of  the  immense  majority  of 
human  beings  ;  indeed,  this  judgment  is  so  automatic 
and  organic  that  it  might  startle  most  people  to  hear 
it  put  into  words,  and  only  a  philosopher  and  moralist 
can  waste  breath  in  putting  it  !  But  looking  facts  in 
the  face,  this  unspoken  judgment  of  mankind  is 
probably  fairly  correct.  Philosophic  speculation  as 
distinguished  from  scientific,  and  ethical  ideal 
as  distinguished  from  superstitious  regulations  and 
practices,  have,  so  far,  had  wonderfully  little  con- 
tact with  the  life  of  mankind  ;  mankind  has  there- 
fore not  insisted  on  their  being  of  a  better  quality  ; 
and  not  being  of  a  better  quality,  &c.,  &c.  'Tis  a 
vicious  circle. 

Here,  being  myself  a  philosopher  and  moralist,  I 
can  only,  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart,  ejaculate 
"  More's  the  pity  ! "  It  is  a  pity  that  mankind 
should  live  from  hand  to  mouth  without  any  veritable 


A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      367 

thinking  of  thoughts  or  feeling  of  emotions  save  those 
connected  with  keeping  itself  tolerably  alive  and  leav- 
ing behind  a  fresh  supply  of  tolerably  or  intolerably 
living  creatures.  It  is  a  dull  state  of  things,  and  dul- 
ness  turns  easily  to  stimulants,  which  do  more  harm 
than  good.  Thinking  large  thoughts,  feeling  wide  and 
unselfish  emotions,  is  pleasant  ;  and  it  ought  also  to  be 
useful.  Mankind  is  none  the  better  off  in  practical 
matters  for  its  own  selfishness  and  narrowness  of  mind. 
And  (I  do  not  think  this  can  be  a  mere  remnant  of 
teleological  superstition)  if  the  play  instinct  of 
the  race  has  expressed  itself  for  seons  in  philosophy  and 
religion,  surely  it  must  be  that  this  play  instinct  (like 
that  of  kittens  practising  how  to  mouse,  or  little  girls 
how  to  put  dolls  to  bed)  is  the  preparation  for  some 
useful  employment.  The  time  may  come,  who  knows  ? 
when  intellectual  systems  and  ideal  emotions  be  put  to 
practical  use  ;  and  then  mankind  will  see  to  their  being> 
what  they  have  not  often  been,  really  usable. 


Now  when  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  shall  be  coming 
on  Earth  (and  for  those  who  believe  in  it  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  is  always  coming  within  their  lifetime  or 
their  children's  !)  one  of  the  most  unmistakable 
signs  will  be  the  gradual  cessation  of  all  self-assertive 
ragings  on  the  part  of  the  Wise,  and  the  gradual 
abatement  of  exaggerated  claims  and  denunciations 
on  the  part  of  the  Holy.  Philosophers  will  begin 


368      A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

to  think  not  in  opposition  but  in  co-operation,  even 
as  the  Lion,  we  are  told,  will  on  a  similar  occasion 
lie  down  with  the  Lamb  ;  and  moralists  will  be  full 
of  understanding  and  respect  towards  human  nature. 
Prophesying,  in  the  fashion  in  which  Carlyle  and 
Ruskin,  Tolstoi  and  Nietzsche,  have  carried  on  that 
calling,  will  cease  ;  and  most  particularly  prophesying 
against  other  prophets.  Idols  will  no  longer  be 
publicly  burnt  by  their  former  worshippers  ;  and 
idols  will  be  made  only  for  strictly  private  devotion. 
Moral  and  intellectual  health  will  be  sufficient  for  each 
to  choose  how  much  he  can  accept  of  each  set  of  views  ; 
intolerance,  exaggeration  and  aggressiveness  will  no 
longer  be  needed  to  awaken  torpid,  or  keep  up 
vacillating,  interest  ;  the  consciousness  of  being  able 
to  do  but  little  will  be  an  incentive  to  do  the  most ; 
faith  will  move  molehills  because  it  no  longer  expects 
to  move  mountains  ;  and  the  avowal  of  such  a  thing 
as  a  will  to  belie-ve  (in  the  sense  of  Professor  William 
James)  will  be  recognised  as  the  sign  of  incapacity  for 
any  real  belief  at  all. 

If  this  is  the  change  which  Mr.  Wells  expects  the 
twentieth  century  to  inaugurate,  why  then  deliberative 
planning-out  of  the  Future,  Constructive  Socialism, 
and  Voluntary  Service  (of  a  Samurai  type)  of  Coming 
Generations,  may  presently  begin  to  be  realised. 
But  the  sign  of  the  Coming  of  Utopia  will  be  the 
purging  and  re-tempering  of  philosophical  thought 
and  ethical  emotion  in  the  furnace  of  responsibility. 

Is  this  change  really  about  to  set  in,  even  if  it 
take  almost  a  geological  era  to  bring  to  maturity  ? 
I  am  unable  to  form  an  opinion  ;  for  I  belong,  alas, 


A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT  MR.   WELLS      369 

to  the  generation  of  the  Unreclaimed.  But,  for 
anything  I  can  tell,  it  may  be  beginning  already, 
with  the  appearance  (if  they  have  appeared  !)  of  a 
small  number  of  individuals  belonging  to  the  practical 
classes,  like  Mr.  Wells's  "  skilled  mechanic  "  and  Mr. 
Shaw's  immortal  chauffeur  'Ennery,  who  will  bring 
into  abstract  and  ideal  matters,  into  philosophy  and 
ethics,  some  of  the  modesty  of  expectation  and  of  the 
disciplined  delicacy  of  handling  without  which  they 
could  not  have  perfected  a  bicycle  and  driven  a 
motor-car. 

Accustomed  to  do  their  best  for  the  sake  of  the 
smallest  advantage ;  accustomed  to  distrust  equally 
themselves  and  their  material,  and  to  test  skill  by 
results ;  accustomed  to  work  in  concert  with  their 
mates  and  keep  an  eye  on  the  improvements  of  their 
rivals  ;  accustomed  especially  to  the  chances  of  success 
and  failure,  such  people  may  bring  into  the  things 
of  the  Spirit  a  habit  of  fair  play  and  self-criticism, 
of  respect  for  achievement  and  contempt  for  per- 
functoriness,  a  sense  of  responsibility  born  of  dealing 
with  things  which  have  immediate  and  indisputable 
consequences,  with  simple  and  relentless  facts  which 
no  definitions  and  no  rhetoric  can  alter.  It  may  be 
that  this  is  the  case.  The  integration  of  ideal  thought 
and  aspiration  with  practical  life  may  be  about  to 
begin,  may  in  fact  be  beginning  ;  the  anarchy  of 
idea-less  and  impractical  ideals  may  be  drawing  to 
a  close.  And  the  future  at  our  hand,  or  at  least 
within  our  sight,  may  show  some  application  of  that 
capacity  for  systematic  thinking  and  impersonal 
emotion  which  has  hitherto  seemed  little  more  than 


370      A   POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

a  play  instinct  of  the  leisured  portions  of  mankind. 
It  may  be.  At  any  rate,  Mr.  Wells  has  a  right  to 
expect  it ;  and  we  have  a  right  to  expect  it  when  we 
consider  Mr.  Wells. 

For  in  all  his  scientific  books,  but  most  of  all  in 
this  latest  one  on  America,  Mr.  Wells  has  given 
us  something  more  valuable  than  even  the  most 
valuable  ideas,  and  something  more  novel  than  the 
newest  ones ;  and  that  is  an  example  of  what  the 
attitude  of  the  individual  thinker  might  and  (in  my 
opinion)  should  be.  The  thing  seems  so  simple  and 
natural,  now  it  is  there,  that  it  is  almost  unnecessary, 
and  at  any  rate  difficult,  to  describe  it.  Mr.  Wells 
is  not  merely  truthful  in  what  he  says — many  people, 
including  some  impostors,  have  been  that  :  he  is 
truthful  in  his  way  of  saying  it.  He  does  not 
dogmatise  and  he  does  not  prophesy  ;  he  just  thinks 
his  own  thoughts  and  asks  us  to  listen  to  what  he 
thinks.  He  does  not  imagine  that  he  is  come  with 
a  hammer  to  break  idols  and  adversaries'  skulls ; 
nor  pretend,  to  himself  any  more  than  to  others,  that 
he  is  come  as  the  exponent  of  consecrated  wisdom. 
He  is  neither  the  prophetic  /,  nor  the  sacerdotal  We. 
He  is  just  himself,  believing  in  his  own  thoughts 
because  they  are  his  own,  and  ready  to  allow  other 
folk  to  believe  in  theirs  for  the  same  simple  reason. 
He  knows  that  he  is  not  the  Mind  of  the  Universe 
nor  the  Conscience  of  the  Centuries,  but  an  individual, 
like  and  unlike  other  individuals,  liable  to  error, 
but  all  the  more  determined  to  be  as  little  mistaken 
as  may  be  ;  unable  to  attain  certainty  for  himself, 
but  all  the  more  unable  to  accept  it  from  any  one  else. 


A    POSTSCRIPT   ABOUT   MR.   WELLS      371 

In  fact  he  is,  in  his  manner  of  feeling  himself  and 
of  presenting  himself  to  others,  absolutely  true  to 
the  reality  of  the  case.  Hence  he  is  modest  and 
self-reliant.  And  above  all,  knowing  that  he  cannot 
give  as  much  as  is  needed,  he  is  generous  in  giving 
all  he  has.  It  never  enters  his  head  to  ask  anyone 
to  be  his  follower  ;  he  seems  never  to  have  heard  of 
those  sublime  sibylline  manners  with  which  prophets 
threaten  to  tell  you  nothing  if  you  are  not  willing 
to  accept  all.  What  he  says  is  said  because  it  interests 
himself,  and  in  the  wish  that  it  may  also  interest 
you  ;  but  he  recognises  that  he  himself  is  the 
person  most  interested.  Similarly,  he  is  no  more 
proud  than  he  is  ashamed,  of  being  an  individual  : 
he  recognises  it  as  the  common  lot  and  the  sine 
qua  non  of  activity,  though  the  origin  of  some 
drawbacks.  He  does  his  best  because  it  is  all  he 
can  do. 

It  may  be  that  such  is  a  common  attitude  among 
scientific  workers  ;  I  am  too  ignorant  of  their  ways 
to  tell.  What  I  do  know  is  that  it  is  not  the  attitude 
of  philosophers  and  of  moralists,  of  sages  and  prophets 
and  priests.  What  it  is,  undoubtedly,  is  human  or 
humane,  in  the  sense  of  being  rational  and  well-bred  ; 
giving  much,  taking  much,  and  not  claiming  more 
than  one's  own  standing-room ;  moreover,  that  it 
answers  to  the  reality  of  things.  Hence  it  is  an 
attitude  which  will  work  in  with  reality's  action. 
What  is  more,  I  feel  convinced  that  this  is  the  attitude 
of  the  Future  ;  the  one  which  the  Future  will  require, 
without  any  doubt  ;  the  one  which  the  Future  will 
furnish,  I  most  ardently  hope.  And  in  this  hope  of 


372      A   POSTSCRIPT  ABOUT   MR.   WELLS 

the  gradual  coming  of  intellectual  self-restraint  and 
goodwill,  I  am  happy  to  take  leave  of  the  prophets 
and  gospels  of  the  anarchical  past  and  anarchical 
present. 

January — August  y    1907. 


ONWIN  BROTHERS,  LIMITED,  THE  GRESHAM  PRESS,  WOKI.VG  AND  LONDON. 


DC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL 


A     000  670  629     5 


